


A World Without Secrets

by Blorcyn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Magical War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28108158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blorcyn/pseuds/Blorcyn
Summary: There are so few tags, because other than AU, I can't find anything else that applies.This is a story I wrote a while back that I've got nothing further to do to. It's got problems I think, but I still like the images I see at various points along his expedition. It's a bit weird, as it's a companion piece to a Massive AU HP story where Hogwarts is in London and there's no statute of secrecy.This story follows a young wizard called Tom who is serving in the military for Britain during Grindelwald's war. He is tasked with finding out what a British Wizarding War Hero has been doing at the heart of the Nile, where the First Wizards, the Ancient Egyptians, believed Magic originated. As he gets further and further from civilisation, he finds himself more and more troubled by what is without, and what is within.The story is inspired by Heart of Darkness by Conrad, and Apocalypse Now, HoD's adaptation.





	1. The Sea

**1\. The Sea**

Start at the start?

That’s easy to say, but hard to do. If I tell you about what he said to me, you won’t _get_ it, you won’t know where I was, when I heard it.

A cigarette would really help, I think. No? No.

Fine. To tell you about Prewett you need to understand the circumstances under which we met and for that we must start somewhere before your more bureaucratic interests.

Fort Elizabeth, where I started this hell, was a stone ship, a port, on the coast of Portugal. She berthed three-thousand men, excluding visiting ships' crew, and was a frequent call for those taking the long way to Africa.

We spent our days stamping forms, looking out at the Atlantic, and waiting. Running drills. We were keen, and hungry, all of us ready for any chance that we might run over the peninsula and drive out the Hun from their enchanted hidey-holes.

“Reeve’s looking for you, Tom.”

Charm was looking at me, puzzled, from where he’d ducked through the tent flap. Couldn’t blame him, it was definitely odd.

“What’s he want with—“

The Reeve walked through the tent flap, Red Rod was right behind him.

Two dozen of us jumped to our feet in a wave of mistimed salutes and clattering cutlery.

Red Rod pointed me out quickly, but I’d seen the Reeve before at larger briefings and he locked eyes with me right away. He was a tall, thin fellow with a pinched face. Very pointy, like a wedge of cheese. They took the salute and our arms dropped.

“Ushers, please sit.” The Reeve looked at me. “Tom Clarke, First Cursebearer?”

“Sir,” I said.

“Need you in the big tent, Clarke. Follow along. Thank you, Brown.” The Reeve took a salute from Red Rod and turned on his heel in one motion to stride from the tent in long steps.

Snatching up my beret from the tabletop to follow, there was time for a mournful parting glance at my untouched dinner: sausage and oil roasted peppers. Second Potioneer, the bugger, was already reaching for it.

It was dark outside. The anbaric lights were only just coming to life but the sunset came quickly in this part of the world, and, opposite the last deep blues and yellows of sunset the sky was darker, showing the first stars of the night.

“Warming charm, sir?”

He looked at me from the corner of his eye, not slowing his step. “Mendelli,” he said, plucking at his rich magic-made sleeve. Then nothing.

“Where did you school, sir?”

“Hogwarts.” His voice was clipped. “Same as you, same as every wizard.”

Quite clearly, I had meant which Hogwarts college, who would ask anything else? A reformer? As Silver Rod, not likely. Was he so averse to a little junior brown-nosing? As an officer of any degree, also not likely. So, why so terse?

He had to have been _sent_ for me. And wasn't that a peculiar thought.

We were at the big tent though perhaps tent was not a fair term. Fortresses could take less punishment than a canopy that heavily charmed. To either side of a fixed, wooden door stood an Usher, and besides them two Corporals with bolt-rifles. They saluted, he saluted, everyone saluted.

The Reeve led the way to an office door at the rear of the tent.

“Wait here,” he said.

He wasn’t all the way through before someone barked ‘bring him in, Reeve.’ Gruff, a real gruff voice.

Yes. Exactly, him. Very distinctive, I learned.

They were all arrayed like a jury. There was a grand desk opposite the door and behind it sat three officers. Officers I should never have expected to call for me or have knowledge of my existence.

The Banneret of course, in his gold mantle, was there, to have sent the Reeve. As the Usher to the whole port, and all the wizards at that station, I might only expect to see him outside a function if I were being sent down. He was sat next to his muggle equivalent, the Commodore for the port.

To his right was the Admiral.

In his whites, jacket off, hat resting on the table. With the anchor and crossed anchors and all that. Commander-in-chief for the whole Mediterranean fleet, looking right into my eyes.

He did a very peculiar thing then, while Reeve took his place with the Unspeakable and the Lieutenant. Upon my arrival and salute, he started plating up food for the assembled company like a skivvy.

Oh? Yes, there was an Unspeakable there, he didn’t say a word until near the end. I had known that Unspeakables don’t have a face, or names—or a soul, when working, it seems—still, I had always assumed a cowl filled with shadows for your lot. Not this... memory magic.

But yes, he did catch my eye. I spent half a minute looking at the colour of his eyes, his nose, his hair colour, trying to put it all together. I am that way when I encounter novel magic, I’m afraid.

The Admiral was assembling strawberries, and blueberries, and perhaps eggs or maybe a pancake onto china plates.

He left me saluting for at least half a minute. The CO, the Banneret, they looked right through me, and the whole while the Admiral plated for the gallery, then for his ranking officers.

At his leisure, he sat. He had a jar of honey at this time — I think the Banneret had summoned it for him — and he flung honey droplets over the table and open folders to his side.

There were photoplates of myself in at least three of them. One of them I recognised from my passing out.

My palms were a tingle at my side.

“Alright, that’s quite long enough,” he said. “You know who I am, son?”

“Yes, Admiral,” I said.

“And these fine gentlemen around me?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Introduce yourself,” he instructed, waving a hand in a lazy circle. “For my friends in the back.”

“First Cursebearer, Usher in Extraordinary to the Canoeists of Port Elizabeth, sir.”

“Your name, son.”

“Tom Clarke,” I said.

He waved a hand again, at the Banneret this time. “Lay out the charges.” In hindsight, I am glad that he never set me at ease. I would have unmanned myself then, I think.

Banneret drew his wand and cast a small charm against the wall. There was an image of me, passing out in the mantle of a half rod.

“This was your first commission, Cursebearer?”

“Yes, sir. Half rod to a company in the Royal Marines, sir.”

He flicked his wand and there was an illusion of myself in full-mantle. My moustache still yet to come in.

“You excelled in that role and were quickly risen to Usher in Ordinary, is this correct?”

“Twelve months, sir, yes.” Where was this going, I thought, my career track was no great mystery.

He flicked, and then there I was in France, at port in my Cursebearer mantle.

“Promoted to your current rank for excellence in the field, four years ago. Tell us why.”

“Yes, sir. It was the extraction from Brittany after Grindelwald’s sennight salvo—“

“No, Clarke. Tell us why you’re still an Usher in Extraordinary.”

Wrong-footed, it took me a minute to summon an acceptable answer.

“I value my contribution as a combatant, I allow my canoeists to excel and I am committed to doing my best for crown and for country.”

Banneret looked to the Admiral, and he nodded sharply.

With a flick of the wand, there was a picture of someone else. Long hair, different skin, freckled and blonde. Different in a thousand overt details, but the same height as me, the same weight as me and, of course, the eyes were the same. He clearly wore a red mantle.

Ah, I thought. I see.

My eyes fixed themselves on the wall above your colleagues head. My chin was turned up. The cast of my mouth was changed and they saw. There was no politeness, no _laissez-faire_ in their questions from that point onward.

“Where did you serve on promotion to Cursebearer, Clarke?”

“I was recruited to the Special Service Brigade, sir.”

“What was your role in the SSB, Clarke?”

“Sir, I believe I am not authorised to discuss internal policy of the SSB, at this point, sir.”

The admiral cut in. “I am authorising you, Clarke.” He gestured at the Banneret again, and the illusion wove itself into the smiling face of Professor Kurtz in his Gryffindor Professor dress robes.

“Do you recognise this man, Clarke?”

“I do, sir,” I said.

“Now, our records say,” he flipped a file shut, “Professor Kurtz was still in contact with former European students. He may or may not have been providing information on Gryffindor students lined up for the military to these friends.”

I said nothing. I said nothing for a long while.

“Are you aware of the fate of Professor Kurtz, before your transfer to this port, Clarke?” He asked.

“I am, sir.” I quickly added, “it was highly publicised.”

“It was,” he nodded. He looked around at his assembled staff. Looking at them in turn. When he turned back, he crossed his forearms on the desk, leaned towards me, slightly.

“Clarke,” he said, “Banyard and the SSB are very far away, and we are not. So, I want you to think about this next question very carefully before you answer.

“Did the SSB instruct you to kill Professor Kurtz, and place you as Gryffindor’s Red Rod to do it?”

My eyes drifted from the wall. My mind still, my thoughts slow, I met his eyes.

“Sir, I do not believe I am authorised to discuss SSB mission briefs at this time.”

He sat back in his chair.

The Admiral stood, picked up a folder and walked round the table to me. Turned his back to me. When he turned back, he had made up another plate of this odd evening-breakfast and he handed it over.

“Take it,” he said.

I did, out of reflex. I had missed my dinner.

“Have a seat, Mr. Clarke,” he said. The only seat available was the one he had left. Very gingerly, I sat. Next to the Commodore, next to the Banneret. Very odd indeed.

The Banneret flicked his wand and there was a picture of Africa, and the Mediterranean above it. The upper border of the projection sliced across Southern Europe like a knife.

The map was mainly topographical, painstakingly illustrated, but vast swathes of the west and the coasts of Africa were shaded red. The East was highlighted in black.

This was the rough state of Grindelwald’s expanding empire, and his encroaching onto British dominion, informal or otherwise.

The borders weren’t unfamiliar to me. There was little to be done at Fort Elizabeth other than read papers, track the fronts, and accommodate a pervasive sort of dread that we might be suddenly overcome at any moment.

“Egypt, and the Canal, are vital to our navy and the war effort. We are making significant ground in reclaiming it. We have re-taken Alexandria, we are taking Cairo and we will use the small canals from there to launch an assault on the Canal’s port cities.

“This is the heart of Africa,” and he thwacked a finger against the projection. Not far from Tanganyika. “This is where I’d like to direct your attention.” 

He nodded to the Banneret, and an image of a bald man appeared.

Maybe forty years old, he was well built and bearded like a Merchant Navy Captain. In the illusion he looked back at the room and there was a depth to his eyes that most lacked.

“Do you recognise him?” asked the Admiral.

A shake of the head was the answer. So busy studying this character that the question was almost missed.

“Banneret Prewett,” said the Admiral, “he was with the SSB, too. Brilliant man. Powerful, humanitarian man. A good mind, a good commander. He was called up by the SSB, same as you, and his practices became... unsound.

“This war, so close to home. Yet, many of us stationed so far from the homeland and proper civilisation. Magical warfare on a scale not seen since the Romans. It can make even the best of us have ... queer ideas. Forget what we’re about. Indulge in ... inappropriate practices. You understand, son?”

I nodded, I felt that I ought to.

“He’s out there, beyond the reach of any better society. Unbound by anything except his own initiative. We are each of us a product of two things, our nature but also our better judgement.

“You must be his better judgement now. The SSB made this mess. You can clean it up.”

“I will, sir.”

“Banneret Prewett is in a singularly unique position to act. The SSB sent him with a small command to the heart of Africa, the source of the Nile. Retracing Grindelwald’s steps.

“We need you to persuade him to return to a sensible part of the world or to not return at all.”

“Persuade, sir?”

It was the Unspeakable that spoke here.

“Persuade,” he said, “with extreme prejudice.”

“Your mission, Mr. Clarke, is to take passage with the 4th Corvette Squadron to Cairo. From there, you’ll be joining a patrol up the Nile.

“Follow it to the source. Find out what Banneret Prewett has been doing with this native tribe he’s pressed, bring him back to account for his actions, or don't bring him back at all.”

That was the gist of it. They gave me details of his command, a stack full of intel. They talked about the watercourse, and the dysplottable nature of the Nile.

Then they sent me on my way. HMS Dryad was expecting my report that evening.

I told the Potioneer that he was acting First for the Canoeists and briefed him. My personals were quickly shrunk and I got dressed in my ones: Formal mantle over the epaulette, much longer than the usual pellegrine, then the marine frock coat and my hat, all very proper.

I was flooing to the bridge of Gibraltar within two hours.

***** *****

There was a First Usher in Extraordinary on HMS Dryad already, a potioneer, and the ship’s commodore set me to his service. The wizard’s hackles were raised from the moment I stepped aboard. I don’t know what he thought I represented. I imagine he was new to his command.

He ordered me down with the half rods preparing for launch. It was a reasonable assignment. I didn’t know the ship’s sequence of moments, nor its inventory or its guns. The dismissal wouldn’t have irked so much, however, if he had not been such a prigg.

Still, there’s something in casting basic magic. Charming the stilts for a voyage, settling the fins and inspecting the arcuates, that sort of thing, a simple pleasure. This is why we were ushers, not midshipmen, not captains, not surgeon-healers or whatever else the muggles might do instead, and it wasn’t paper work, of course.

The corvette was a ten-gun cutter. The lead vessel of the squadron and a little bit greater for it. It had a turret on the aft and the fore and two more guns in barbettes mid-ship. Over the flaring, the final gun stood proudly from the fore-stilt, careful not to be within reach of the water.

Is this too much flavour? Too little? Your colleague by the door is sighing. I shall try and keep it concise from this point forward, just the important bits. Where were we? Ah, my welcome.

Morgrave, Commodore Morgrave, was in charge of the little four ship squadron. I never saw him in a coat, not once in two days, not when the sea was choppy and spray hit up over the steel deck, not at dinner, and not when the guns fired. But his hat—a great big two-pointed commander’s hat like Hornblower would wear—he was never without it.

He welcomed me onto his ship alongside his senior staff with a handshake I thought might take my arm at the wrist. I was the last of several travelling officers, taking passage across the sea.

Yes this was before the Potioneer sent me to the stilts, exactly, and he was stood besides the Commodore, welcoming us with the other officers at this point.

“Commodore Morgrave,” I said, but the handshakes were over and he was already walking towards the bow of the ship. “Commodore!”

“First Potioneer will get you squared away—” He pointed at something on the deck, and then he was bellowing at the nearest seaman. “Whose hat is this?! Pick up your hat, son. You will not disrespect my ship!”

“Commodore,” I said, catching up, “I have a special brief from the Admiralty.”

Morgrave took my missive from the Admiral, scanned it quickly.

“Cairo!” he said. Then, more quietly, “Cairo.”

He whipped his hat off and threw it into the air. “We’re going to Cairo, men!” The ship’s crew were turning to look at him. “Cairo!” He shouted. An able hand nearby got a slap on the back. “We’re going to see the pyramids, son! Tell the Cox.” The commodore turned back on himself suddenly, marching past me, towards his staff. He took the Potioneer by the sleeve and dragged him with.

“Lieutenant! We’re going to shell some history together. Are you excited? I am excited. Tell the squadron. Get the stilts down, and flare the fins. I want us there tomorrow night.”

I caught the Commodore as he stopped again, “Commodore Morgrave,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“—Commodore,” said his First Lieutenant. He had my missive in his hand now. “We’re to put in at Alexandria first with the flotilla and then—“

“Pardon my french but fuck the flotilla!” he bellowed. “Get us to Cairo.”

The Lieutenants took the opportunity to flee.

Morgrave straightened his peculiar hat back on his head. He put one foot up on the side of the boarding ramp. “Ready away!”

It was worth seeing if my mission could be advanced a little further, in a little more safety.

“Sir,” I said, again, “if you could take the squadron south of Helwan, I could put down beyond the fighting, and it’ll be English forts all the way to Khartoum.”

“Helwan?” He turned to me.

“A small city just south of Cairo, Commodore.”

“I know where Helwan is, Curse! No, no, no. It’s Cairo for us!”

“Sir, the admiralty put you to this assignment—”

“The admiralty put me to war. And war I shall make. Don’t harangue me. See what Potioneer has up his sleeve, I want you busy till we’re ready to put you down.”

He stomped towards the door to the bridge. “Cairo, and the pyramids!” he shouted to the ship. He closed the door with a clang, and I was left stymied.

“To the Stilts, Cursebearer, make yourself useful,” said Potioneer, at my shoulder.

***** *****

The half-rods stared at me with a sort of wary awe while I worked. Like I was perhaps a trap, a secret drill-sergeant there to catch them out and scream at them till their ears rang.

I took an arcuate, a stilt and a fin to myself and worked through the suite of charms. Somehow I was the first to finish. The value of a quality education, I suppose.

Afterwards, dodging Potioneer, my poky berth served as a hidey-hole to look through the intel I had on Prewett.

It was a waxy folder, full of loose sheets, but there was plenty to read.

The man was exceptional. He had been a scholar at Hogwarts, and a prize winner. Unusually for a military man, he’d then studied at University College before being accepted into the Navy’s officers programme.

At 32, the war had started and he had been attached to high command. He was a Reeve by this point and, at the fall of Dunkirk, he had been one of the famous seven to engage Grindelwald.

After some months in St. Mungo’s he had requested a transfer to the SSB. A new and peculiar unit, particularly affiliated with your people, he had had to apply three times before high command had let him leave them.

He must have known it was the end of his career. He had a position with the high staff, he was being groomed for command, maybe had a shot at Black Rod. With the SSB he’d never be more than a Banneret.

Somehow he forced their hand, and they put him in the field. Peculiar missions in peculiar locations. Mogadishu, Shanghai, Abyssinia.

He had been phenomenally successful, too. In Mogadishu, he had captured three ships and cursed them to the seafloor in the harbour mouth. Eventually the sea would wash the magic away, but for several years more Grindelwald’s navy would be feeling the irritation of Prewett’s efforts. It was clear that his brief had been something else entirely, from the language of his report, but how could they punish success? And he brought success after success, in his own violent way.

What interested me most, though, were the letters which had been received in the last several months, since his venturing into Africa. They were on that flimsy almost see through tracing paper that comms used for those far places beyond Floo. 

_February, 1935_

_Prewett._ It said. No rank, no brigade, nothing else to identify him.

_Epicurus said his soul was whole and immaterial, and we, blindly, believed his revelation. Let it take root, let it sink deep into the collective firmament._

_I have experienced my own revelation, Admiral. I was in France, on the bridge of the flagship when Grindelwald attacked. The bombardment struck me dumb by ringing. A damnable, continuing ringing. All around me, muggles and wizards were shouting, screaming, dying. I could not hear, I was deaf, but I knew it, I was deaf and still I heard their screaming, communication deeper than sound._

Another, from just over a month before my setting out was equally incomprehensible.

_May, 1935_

_Prewett_

_A special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body..._

_I find myself reflecting on the relationship between a ship and her crew. Between a nation and her people, and I am struck by how a granular substance can form a whole. Granular but whole. What am I to make of this, in this place, except an off-hand rejection of all holy and academic thought. Granularity, Admiral. Granularity, and we are all grains._

_I am close to it now, Bob. I suspect this is the answer to our riddle, as it was before, for him. Whether I succeed or fail, whether I live or perish by the improvement... I shall show how we might be more than we are. Whole, at last._

The man had gone completely insane, his letters making no sense. It was a regret that they were typed. That there could be no insight into their composition. Would it have been an ink splotched feverish monstrosity of handwriting or something clipped, precise and lined?

There was a newspaper clipping of him in my folder, also, from a piece on his fight with Grindelwald. They, too, used the photoplate I had seen in the briefing. He looked away from the camera, staring into the distance at something only he could see.

At the back of the folder there was a copy of the aims for Prewett’s final briefing. It was short. Capture the heart of the Nile. Secure river lanes for the transport of magical flora and fauna. Investigate evidence of Grindelwald’s expedition, and report. Then some flotsam about company and inventory.

Brilliant and mad. Likely just mad, now.

What was expected, at the far end of the Nile? I can no longer recall, the reality of it has driven all earlier imaginings out of me.

***** *****

We made good speed over the Mediterranean and there were no obvious difficulties as the squadron pulled further away from the main flotilla.

I spent the day assisting the half-rods with their general duties, for a given value of assist. I would try and loiter near any group of three or more, to get a sense of them.

The poor sprouts never grew used to me, overly polite even amongst themselves while I was there. I would offer tips, odd ideas, a few stories where I could think of them (though I’m not one for long stories), that sort of thing.

The important part was that Potioneer would come over whenever he spotted me, to bark out a command and disperse the group, and I made sure we all locked up tight and silent, whenever he stomped near.

His suspicious frown was my main contribution to that ship’s happy sailing, I think.

You boys wouldn’t know this—not having done a day’s work under the light of the sun in your lives, I bet—but, generally speaking there might only be two or three ushers on any rated vessel before the war, often fewer.

These images and accounts you’re reading in the paper, of a hundred of us enchanting a ship canal or summoning the rains over desert, are entirely a product of this peculiar conflict. Before, there was little advantage on a ship in having ten wizards over one because the other side used none at all. Half-rods, by all rights, shouldn’t be afloat on anything that doesn’t shoot rubber, or crosses more than a harbour mouth.

This war...

Six years of this war, well, perhaps it would be more surprising if the whiskerless lads weren’t at sea with us.

Potioneer saw them as his wards, is my suspicion, and himself as their hard-done-by father. Which would make me the bachelor uncle, there to tempt them into dissolute ways. Of course, I was flattered, and I try to do as is expected of me, by those whose opinion I hold close.

Which, you are right to think, is why I’ve yet to tell you anything at all about the Nile.

It was raining and sunset, and intel is best picked over piece by piece. On the deck, the fine rain mixed with the spray off the waves, and I watched the waves from under a thick umbrella charm, rain catching on its surface, and reflected on the sketch of Prewett that I had obtained.

I stood at the fore. After a short while, I was cold enough that it dragged me from turning over those few same titbits. I cast a warming charm, a drying charm and then the umbrella charm over my head and turned back to the sea.

“Curse!” came Potioneer’s scratchy voice.

“First Usher, Potioneer,” I said, “how may I be of assistance to you, on this balmy Mediterranean evening?”

“Magic on the deck. Without licence.”

My eyebrows near climbed off my head.

“Without licence?”

“Travelling officers, on voyage with a ship may only—“

A flick of the wand cancelled the umbrella charm. If it was cancelled poised to drop over his head it was none of my business.

He spluttered.

“You did that on purpose,” he said. The man didn’t even draw his wand to dry himself. Just stood there, sodden. He was beyond friendship, dignity, and even common civility. I am sorry to say that I had had entirely enough of him.

Stepping close, close enough to be uncomfortable, like lovers in a hidden corner, I looked down at him. Underneath the peak of his hat his short hair was peppered with grey, I realised.

“If you keep following me like a house-elf then I’ll treat you like one,” I said.

"An elf! How long have you been a UIE?" he asked. "Half a year? A year?"

"Nearly five years," I said. He startled.

"Well, it's eight for me," he said, "so I'm the senior Usher, and you just threatened me."

Eight years a Potioneer, during a great big war, and still on corvettes. No colour to the rod that hung from his hip, holding his wand.

"No threats, your highness," I said, "I don't threaten."

"You don't like me–"

"A seer as well," I said.

"I don't care if you don't like me," he said, "I don't care if you're the best thing since Merlin."

"I find that difficult to believe. I'm yet to see you by a cauldron, or chasing after any wizard but myself."

"You're a spare part," he said, "and you're determined to get in the way. There's a reason for rank, there's a reason you should've come to me properly when you got here, not gone straight to the Commodore."

I remember being surprised. That was the reason he was telling himself that he didn't like me? Because I took an order from the fleet Admiral to the squadron Commodore?

"You have to give over your ego, and start acting like what you are. A small piece in a big game, and if you're determined to be a piece of grit you'll ruin more than just yourself."

"Sounds like an important speck of grit," I said, "now get out of my way, unless you want to piss scorpions for a month."

He stepped aside, and the git smiled. Had the presumption to look as if he'd scored a victory.

Leaving the deck, to the cabin, my boots stamped through the metal corridors and I turned the corner and almost walked straight into the Lieutenant who was sharing the room with me.

"Curse," he said. "Clarke."

"Lieutenant," I said. He was in mess formals. Properly scrubbed up.

"Commodore is having a squadron dinner for the officers. Chop chop." My surprise must have been clear on my face. "Did your Potioneer friend not tell you?"

"It must have slipped his mind," I said.

***** *****

There wasn't time to dress properly, so I banished the clothes to my bed, charmed them, then switched them with the threes I was wearing. There's never moments where I appreciate magic more than when I am rushed.

The officers were only filing into the Commodore's cabin when I joined the tail-end. Potioneer looked at me, eyes turned up like he'd just pissed vinegar.

There was a great long table in the centre of the room, over a middle-eastern carpet of some design. If the cabin wasn't magically expanded than I've no idea how the corvette contained enough space for all of us. 

There were no place-cards, but Commodore shook our hands as we entered, standing in front of his two green coated stewards, and pointed us right – ' _At the top, Captain, on my left_ ' and ' _Just here, Clarke_ ,' – fortunately, Potioneer and I were opposites, not next to one another.

We sat together, the Commodore, the Captains, the Lieutenants and the First Ushers, the medical officers and the Captains-of-the-marines. Apparently the Chaplain and the Commodore never dined together. Never found out why. 

There was silence on being seated, two stewards placed toasting glasses and filled them, before Morgrave spoke. 

“Tudor glass,” he said, “from an auction at the Athenaeum. They made them with sand from the Thames in a kiln charmed by the king himself.” 

One of the Captains seated at his left picked up his glass and turned it under the light, nodding his head a little. He placed it down to silence again. 

The glasses were filled and Morgrave stood. 

“The loyal toast, before dinner,” he said, “on the night of our first sailing.”

A steward plucked out a few verses on a violin and the anthem was sung. 

“The Queen!” said Morgrave, and we downed our drinks. They were refilled. 

“The Duke, the Princess Royal and all her royal family.” We downed them again. They were refilled. 

“Who’s youngest then?” he asked. He gestured at my end of the table. 

“Twenty-three” said a Captain-of-marines. 

“Twenty-four,” said a Lieutenant. 

“Twenty-three,” I said, “March.” 

“January,” the Captain replied, and bowed his head to me. 

I stood, careful not to knock my head on the strut that ran above my chair. I raised my glass. 

“To our wives and sweethearts,” I said. 

“May they never meet!” came the reply. Morgrave slammed a flat palm on the table. There was a cheer and some laughter. Ever a popular one.

“To dinner!” cried Morgrave.

Supper was served _français_ , which was a pleasant surprise for me. 

Anything which reminds me of Hogwarts is always a treat. 

There was a great big wobbly jelly in the middle of the table and then dishes all scattered around, and for a brief while all was quiet while people served themselves. 

It was very good food, for at sea. The benefit of being on the Mediterranean without much fear of starvation. First it was prawns with a honey glaze, then a puree with chorizo and meatballs and fancy rabbit-leaves that floss your teeth when you chew them – which is the only reason I imagine anyone would include them. Then it was good roast beef, lamb, and decent stodge. Normally, muggle folk have just a hint of wariness around a cursebearer. I tried to do their concern justice by covering my whole course in mint sauce.

Morgrave was a surprisingly attentive host, if still as fierce as ever. Between monologues he was constantly snapping his fingers at the stewards, for any glass that had been dry longer than a few moments.

No matter how much he drank, his a-little-too-loud voice never wavered, never became obviously drunk. A true Navy man.

It became clear to me then overhearing his conversation, consciously, that the man loved history the way another man might love shooting or skiing.

“When we finish at Cairo, I’m going south,” I said, too loudly, “to Helwan and the ruins of Memphis.” 

This was a relative non-sequitur. At my end of the table we had been talking about the travelling Lieutenant’s time in the Americas—‘ _Cairo? I’m supposed to be disembarking at Alexandria’_. 

“They say it’s where proper, formal magic was first done.” 

If Morgrave heard, he gave no sign

“Do you know,” I said, “Flinders Diggory breached the great temple spell, less than a week before Grindelwald swept west over Egypt.” 

The young Captain of the Marines broke off his conversation to turn to me. 

“The Hut-ka-Ptah? Impossible.”

A stumble, at the first moment. I wouldn’t’ve predicted an amateur Egyptologist among our company.

“Diggory, Flinders Diggory, the cursebreaker? Who said that?” said Morgrave. 

I indicated it was myself. 

“What’s this about Diggory?” he asked. “I saw him speak at the Crystal Palace, once. Hell of a man. Hell of an adventurer.” 

“The best,” I agreed, “The temples at Memphis. It’s a tragedy, those ruins he opened and was forced to keep secret. Whatever treasures inside left to rot, now open to the air.” 

One of the corvette Captains sighed loudly. I was calling down the table. There was a lull. 

“Cursebearer, come sit here. Captain shuffle down.” 

I did as instructed. He preferred to talk than to listen but over several hours I spoke to him about the treasures of Memphis, just waiting to be plucked up. 

I kept my voice low so that the Captain-of-the-Marines didn’t overhear. Morgrave believed every word.

***** *****

We made good speed over the Mediterranean and there were no obvious difficulties as the squadron pulled further away from the main flotilla. We sliced past Alexandria, to make on to the fattest strand of the Nile’s Delta.

It got hot. The crack of rifles could sometimes be heard inland, as we skirted the coast. Sometimes we heard the boom of great guns. A flagship or a battery firing at something in the far distance. 

It was good, we were untroubled until we reached the river water. There were cries to the Ushers, cries from the Ushers and all the crew rushed around preparing for the change from green water to brown. The stilts folded and the ship’s hull slapped deeper into the water. We were crossed into river water, and charms would fail before long. 

The Nile is the greatest river in the world. The most magical, certainly. Truthfully, there wasn’t a difference that I could feel on reaching it, no great current of magic swirling around me, urging me on towards my destination.

Still, I looked at the water, I moved my hand in the air, and I imagined it, all the magic of the greater part of Africa flowing past me and I felt one of those moments where you really feel connected to the world. And, rarer still, a moment in which that was a _good_ thing. To be a man but also a part of nature. 

It took no more than two minutes for the sea charms to wick away and then there was a slight lurch, like stepping off ice onto carpet, and the world had that much more hold of us. 

It took twice as long to reach sight of Cairo and Giza as it had for the ship to cover all the distance from Alexandria to the river mouth. On the banks there was far more green than expected. Everything was alive, and thriving. This was a great difference from the war seen in France, or at the margins of the Iberian peninsula. No craters, no warp of dark spell-fire, no splintered, blasted trees. 

But then came the thunder of a great gun, then later still the great shudder of its shell landing somewhere out to the east of the delta. 

The Pyramids rose into view gradually. Monumentally huge, dwarfing the city they overshadowed but could not turn the eye from the thick smoke that covered all in a shroud. 

We weren’t called to the briefing. Morgrave had no interest in the city, not as long as he could travel through it. When we reached the city docks we slunk past. 

If Morgrave had informed them of our intentions, I am unaware. Perhaps the command knew. The Union Flag swung free over the port and several nearer portions of the city and soldiers lined the walls, cheering at us as we passed, at first. As the first ship travelled beyond them, then the second, the third, the fourth they quieted. 

I watched the smoke recede into the distance. 

Whatever essential business he had now concluded, Morgrave came to stand near me at the fore-deck. His Lieutenant stood beside him. 

“Not long now,” he said to his officer, “Mr. Jones, you’ve our handshake loaded? Good man.”

“I have, Commodore.” He pulled out his logbook from a pocket at his breast. “There may not be significant resistance at Memphis, you’re certain there’s no need of a reserve for Cairo? It looked pretty hairy there. More Hun around than expected.”

Commodore flapped a hand at him. 

“Curse!” His bicorn hat turned towards me. “Ready for some action?” 

“Always, sir,” I replied. 

“Excellent,” he said, “I’ll have you accompany me when we land.” 

“Accompany you, sir?” 

“Into the great temple, chap! I reckon you’re more cut out for this work than Potioneer.”

My plan worked too well. 

“Commodore Morgrave, my mission is to join up with the river patrol and travel on.” 

“Nonsense,” he said, “come along, Mr. Jones, Mr. Clarke. Best view will be on the bridge.” 

“Sir,” I said, “my mission.” 

“First men to step into the Great Temple of Memphis. Now there’s a mission.” 

“First Potione⸺” 

“The chap doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. We’ll need you for whatever little curses lie inside. Now there’s a mission with chest-hair.”

We had reached the stair by this point. We clattered up the metal steps into the bridge. The windows commanded a view over the whole of that squat town. Morgrave continued, 

“No, you stay with me. You’re not getting through here until it’s squared away.”

The lieutenant met my eyes. He shrugged. Morgrave did what he wanted. 

The deep rumble of the ship's motor stilled and slowly we came to a stop in the middle of the river. 

“Make our introductions, men,” said Morgrave. 

We were by the west bank, closer to the ruins of Memphis. Opposite, over the swollen nile, Helwan, where most of the Egyptians lived and perhaps some small European force. 

The guns turned to fire. It was a strange shot. They fired once, over the city. Then Ushers stood to and cast charms that caught them while they were high. Gusts and banishers and simple magic. 

Lieutenant Jones must have seen my confusion. “We got our hands on a decent whack of Unctuous Unction at Gibraltar,” he said. 

Commodore Morgrave took down the microphone that allowed him to order to the ship, speakers now turned towards the city across the river. 

“People of Helwan, please head to the Docks in an orderly fashion. You will not be harmed. You will be safe. Please head to the Docks.” 

He threw the speaker back to his man, and waved a finger in the air to say ‘keep it playing’. 

“Come on, then. Landing party, let’s explore!”

“Commodore,” said the Lieutenant, “should we begin shelling the city?” 

Morgrave looked at him. “Shell the city? While we ask the civvies to come to the river-dock? Absolutely not! You sicken me, Lieutenant. You are the lowest of the low. You’re off the shore team.” 

“Sir,” he said. 

There was my out, I thought, though I wasn’t happy to use it. 

“Commodore,” I began, “perhaps some spell-fire to the city, to encourage them along in good fashion?” 

Morgrave scratched his chin. But he wasn’t even listening, I realised. He was looking out the west window at the squat temple some miles distant, and the sand-blasted pillars sticking out like little errant hairs. 

“What do you think, Curse? Do you like the look of those ruins? Reckon they’ve cooked up some fierce ancient spells? I want an adventure, mind you. Something to talk about, something to interest the Royal Society.” 

To me it just looked like ruins. Evidence of the futility of trying to hold Egypt, or any land, for a length greater than the span of one man’s life. 

“Yes, there’ll be some curses,” I said. 

He slapped my arm with the back of one hand. “Let’s go.” 

Some of us trooped out with him, down the stairs. On the deck, Potioneer glared at me from his place besides the half-rods as I left him behind. We were half way down the boarding ramp when Lieutenant Jones’ voice came over the speaker. 

“Hun in the square, Commodore.” 

I can’t imagine that the Lieutenant heard Morgrave’s response. But the veins on his neck must have been visible. And the composure of his face. 

“Ready to fire,” came the Lieutenant’s voice. 

We stepped down into Egypt as the barbettes of all four ships started shelling. Deafeningly loud. 

Morgrave turned to me. He waved his arms like a conductor. 

“I love it,” he shouted, “that sound. That great big sound. There’s nothing quite like it.” He held a hand to his chest: where that rumble was passing through him. So large and so terrible that you did more than hear it. “It feels like making the world anew.

“Come on,” he said, heading towards where his marines were securing the dock.

I waited until he was a few steps ahead of me. Then I did something reckless. I focused on the east bank, twisted and held my thumb to my wand. With a pop, I apparated across the Nile, like some feckless daredevil.

For my troubles my eyebrow was splinched and there was a little off the skin off a finger, but I was otherwise unscathed. 

This far across the river, I could only make out the rough movement of the landing party. If they were alarmed, I couldn’t tell, perhaps I am painting an impulsive picture. I am not sure. I drew my wand and cast the summoning charm. After a moment, Morgrave’s bicorn hat came into view. I snagged it under one arm, turned my back on the bombing of the docks and ran south, out of Helwan, too wise to try apparating again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2. The River and Part 3. The Spring are prewritten. I'll give them a last pass and throw them up as time allows. For all, maybe, two people who ever make it this far, I salute you for enduring these bewildering circumstances. One day, when I've worked up more than four chapters for Harry's Collegiate Hogwarts in London story, this may all seem more reasonable.


	2. The River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First Cursebearer Clarke joins the River Patrol who will see him to Prewett, along the whole length of the Nile. It is not an easy journey.

**2\. The River**

South of Helwan, tracking along the river bank, boots covered to the lip in thick mud, I found the patrol.

Two small river-boats were driven up onto the bank and half a dozen men on the shore were looking quietly on, down the river toward the corvettes and the firing. 

“Hullo,” I called, as I climbed out from the rushes, and they turned their rifles on me. 

“Stop!” said one. 

“You are the river patrol waiting to meet an Usher, is that right? Cursebearer Clarke. I be he.”

Their corporal stood them down and came to meet me, very obligingly. He led to his officer, a Lieutenant of the Marines, in charge of the river patrol. 

“We wondered how you would get through to us,” said the Lieutenant. He swept an arm at the ships firing in the river. “Much more impressive method than the last boy. Come on, introductions.” 

There were fifteen in that patrol, including the Lieutenant. I was to take the second boat, and he the first. On my boat were two NCOs, Chief and Lance-Corporal, who I called Lance. There were three Marines, Privates. Cook was on my boat, too. And a Coxswain, and an Able Seaman.

“What’s that?” Able asked, when he helped me clamber into the boat, pointing at my stolen hat. 

“Ballast,” I said. I transfigured it into a stone and put it in my pocket, and he didn’t say anything else. “Let’s get going quickly,” I called to the next boat. “I want to be as far upriver as possible before we make camp.”

“Where are we going?” asked the Lieutenant across the boats. 

“Don’t you know?” I said. 

He shook his head. “Not beyond a point.” 

“Then you don’t need to know. South, Lieutenant. Take us South.”

We made good time against the river. I wore out my wand on river charms to hasten us, applying them over and over again, watching them fail in minutes but valuing the extra reach they brought us. I could not believe a man like Morgrave would not be tempted to fire upriver.

At sunset, we made camp on the riverbank. I charmed warnings into the silt and the grass, as well as I could. Some of us would sleep on the boat and some of us would sleep on the bank, and we rotated through a watch for the nights. It was still fertile here, so there was scrub and some trees and cattle in the distance. In the distance, a shepherd looked at us but did not approach. There was none of the desert yet, nor jungle.

I passed some time transfiguring the water. Transfiguration seemed to take better than other things. When Cook called for dinner I sat at the fire with the men of both boats. They had had long service together in this part of the world and they knew each other. I was an interloper, an outsider and an _Usher_ at that. Their curiosity took a little while to overcome the distance and until well past Khartoum their chatter often passed around me. Although, it was not that I ever became more a part of them, perhaps, but that the losses took more of them away. Now I think on it. 

In those first days, I just listened. Sat amongst them quietly, watching them was like watching the Empire in miniature. All the good, and all the bad. 

“...Cook’s got the hump again,” said Lance, and he sounded Mancunian. 

“Oh, have I?” asked Cook. He was from somewhere further west, an island with a syrupy, strong accent. “Why’s that t’en?” 

“‘Cause this is hot as the devil’s dick, and the Lieutenant sweats when he drinks milk.” All the men laughed. Lieutenant looked over from where he ate in the boat, but he hadn’t heard the cause and he turned back to his maps. He wiped one arm across his forehead. They all laughed again. 

“The ‘eat is good for you. Keeps the malaria out.” 

“Eh, we’ve an Usher with us now,” said Able. He looked at me, “he’ll keep us well. Not every day you can say there’s an Usher on your patrol. Begging your pardon, sir.”

“I’m more adept at causing harm than fixing it,” I said, “though I’ve a few small useful charms.” 

There was a pause, an awkward short thing, while they all remembered what I was. 

“Cox, show us your picture again,” said one of the Privates. 

The Coxswain groaned. 

“Go on,” the Private said, “you’re holding out on your boys. She’s a right looker, your missus.”

“She’s got pretty hair,” said another, around a spoonful of stew. 

“You’ve stopped keeping it in your pack, Cox, so we’ve got to ask,” said the last. 

Chief, the Chief Petty Officer for my boat, pointed his spoon at them. “Leave it there, lads.” 

They quieted down. It was a mixture of services, Navy and Marines. Even though the Corporal, on the Lieutenant’s boat, and Lance, on mine, were their direct superiors it was Chief who took the reigns far more frequently, and in their months together they had found their own pecking order. 

The quiet lasted longer that time. Chief got up first, to go talk to the Lieutenant. Then Cook, going about starting to clean the cauldron and stow the cooking gear. Able took the opportunity to shuffle closer to me. 

“Usher?” he asked. “What’s it like, the magic? Using it, fighting with it?” He was a young man, he was slim, and a little spotty and his eyes were bright. He asked a muggle’s second favourite question without a hint of guile. But it was late. 

“Another time,” I said. My dish was dropped into the washing pot with a splash and I thanked Cook. I conjured a hammock high between two trees and turned in.

***** *****

We reached Luxor in the late morning of the next day. First there were strips, orderly fields squished side by side. Verdant and green. Gradually, small square Egyptian buildings started to appear, and then, in a transition so smooth it was hard to identify, the fields entirely gave way.

The river boats pulled in almost directly next to Command’s tents, maybe fifty feet from the water, which at that point were based in the open ruins of Luxor’s temples. Well-preserved columns and statues enclosed a big square, now filled with troops. It was a horribly vulnerable position. 

We pulled up to the docks, and left the NCOs to source provisions to see us to Khartoum and I followed the Lieutenant to report to the commanding officer. 

We didn’t find him in his tent, nor at any other decent place where you might suspect he’d be. Eventually, we had to beg an NCO to lead us to him. He took us further into the city, to a little bar. 

It wasn’t midday but the scene was more something I’d expect to find at the Ritz or the Ivy at midnight, before the war. Not in the richness of the setting we found, you understand? More the atmosphere. The liveliness, the rowdiness. I feared I’d missed some unexpected armistice announcement. I wasn’t the only one. 

“What’s happened, is it over?” asked Lieutenant, but no one paid any mind to him. 

The bar was indoors and cool, despite the fact that it opened out onto the street behind the temple. There were more than two dozen men there in whites, Navy men. Behind the bar was an Egyptian boy who looked even younger than Able. Several of the sailors were drinking with the local women. 

Their clothes were odd, not what you’d see here. Something more distinct with lots of layers, and colourful but, on them, faded with hems that were a little torn and eyes that were a little sunken and glassy. The glasses they held were crystal and the sailors, at least, were having a good time.

At the bar I muscled into the press to catch the boy’s attention. “You? Where’s the Captain, is the Captain here?” He shook his head at me, more confused than negative, but behind him I saw a man with a white beard and a stained shirt. His shoulder wore a crown, above an anchor. 

I pointed him out, and Lieutenant and I forced our way over. 

“Captain,” said Lieutenant. He snapped off a salute and I followed a moment later, a little slower. 

“Captain,” he said, again. He placed a hand on the Captain’s shoulder and the man turned to us with a start. 

“Who’re you?” His eyes were completely gone. He was four sheets to the wind. 

The Lieutenant gave his name, his details, and began his report. When the Captain’s chin began to sag towards his chest, I shook him again. 

“Captain, what’s happening? Why is everyone here?” 

“Ah,” he said, “Ah.” 

I shook him again. 

“We’re back in the world. We got the message yesterday, no more ‘sit tight’, ‘sit tight’, ‘sit tight’. We’re back in the world, no longer marooned. We’re back in the world.” He gave a ragged little cheer. Across many minutes that was the essential message, though perhaps a little less clear than it is presented now. 

The Captain focused on the Lieutenant as he reattempted the start of his report. 

“From Khartoum? Have you bought my Usher back? Nothing for a hangover like an Usher.”

“No, sir,” he replied, but the Captain was already sagging back again. 

Lieutenant tried for some more time before I led him away. Making our way to the boats, I could see it more than I had on the way up. The tents were orderly, in the right lines, but in the wrong place. The men were present but they weren’t active. They were talking, they were drinking, they were eating. Weapons were far from arms reach, and local children’s faces popped out of tent flaps where we passed by: ourselves strangers in a place where it was clear that few were strangers to them. 

“Did you not stop here, on the way to rendezvous with me?” I asked the Lieutenant. 

“No. We were to gather reports and supplies for Khartoum on returning with you. We didn’t stop here.” 

“Being trapped there,” I said, “in Khartoum, is it like this?” There was a telling pause. 

“No,” he said, after a moment, “not so much like this. There’s enough activity from Fritz down the Blue Nile to keep us honest and keep us busy.” 

“What did he mean when he said ‘have you brought my Usher back’?” I asked. 

“Messages don’t directly reach Khartoum,” said the Lieutenant. “They either come up the Nile from here, or down the White from the lake. 

“There was a Cursebearer before you,” he said, “who came from here. Sent to join us at Khartoum where we took him up to the lake and he left us. I’m not sure what he was up to but he hasn’t come back yet. Perhaps the same as you’re after.”

On the way to the boat, I interrogated him further. Their last passenger wasn’t the only Usher on these British parts of the river, of course, and he had been sent several weeks ago, now. His life story was not known in great detail by the Lieutenant, but it raised an important question in my mind. 

_Why me?_

Why fetch me in Portugal and send me to the Nile when there were a dozen Ushers of my rank, perhaps, already along the Nile. And many more across Africa or closer stretches of the Mediterranean. 

When we reached the boats I had Able point out to me the barrels and such that were ours. I animated them so that they would make their way onto the boats and store themselves safely. 

“Gather the crew! Make ready!” I ordered. 

Chief looked at me for a moment, looked at Lieutenant. “Make ready!” he called, “Lance, go find the triplets. Cox, get off your arse, make ready.” 

I left them to it. 

In a bunk, I pulled out the waxy leather paper-holder with my intel on Prewett. I looked through it again. Looking for something different. _Why me?_

He was a Banneret in the SSB, I was an Usher in Extraordinary in the SSB. Perhaps, but there were maybe a hundred wizards in the SSB and surely one closer than Portugal. 

He and I were both unmarried men, not so odd. Perhaps, however, like myself he was not a man inclined to take a wife. It seemed an unlikely and peculiar leap. 

He and I were both at School at Hogwarts, but he had graduated long before I matriculated. Schoolboy pride was often a salutary line of inquiry, but again, there were those of a kind closer than I had been.

Prewett was a member of an astounding thirteen London clubs. It cast my three into sharp relief. Like all wizards we shared membership of The Educational Reform Club, and, of course, also the Navy, Marines and Army Club. He had many more, of varied interests, but the last we shared was Ogden’s. 

Ogden’s was the second oldest Club in Westminster and the most exclusive club in London. He was a Prewett. My eligibility had come under the auspices of my Mother’s ancient name, and pressure from the SSB while I worked in London. Ogden’s was full of old sorts, and many old sorts had strong connections on the continent, Professor Kurtz had been a frequent attender. My membership at Ogden’s, my taking rooms there, had allowed our relationship to develop. 

Perfunctory as it was, gentlemen. You understand, I can’t discuss it further than that, and it is not your particular interest. 

Perhaps Prewett had been my sponsor on behalf of the SSB, I wondered. Perhaps there was a personal tie to him that I had not been made aware of. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. 

The motor started, the boats moved into the middle of the river. I poured over those documents under lamplit for the rest of the evening. I found nothing firmer than perhaps.

***** *****

My time was spent on the prow, out of the way, as there was little of use an Usher could do for the crew. Casting spells into the Nile was a particular pleasure, seeing the way different magics took or didn’t, and watching the river swirl the product past us, while the ley took my magic further into Africa.

Transfigurations lasted, if they were cast quickly and completely. I sent little figurines of ice down the river, or made misshapen attempts at sculpture on the river banks to horrify any Egyptians who might stumble upon them later. Perhaps they had never seen ice before, or snow, or any of the things that defined my childhood winters in Hangleton. 

Charms were fascinating. Freezing charms made bridges of ice then fell apart, the ice being pulled back into water before my eyes. Boiling charms made the water roil, but the heat was gone almost instantly, to the touch, and the tumbling bubbles went shortly after. It was incredible. So peculiar. I really felt as ancient wizards must have done, as they finally started to piece together magic on the river’s banks. 

Able came to stand beside me. He had been scurrying around, tying ropes and securing barrels and stepping around the Privates who were gambling just in front of the canopy. He seemed to do twice the work of the others in half the time. 

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, “I need to get down under the bench there and organise the cases.”

Beneath my feet, set down a step into the deck, there were four big wooden boxes. When he tried to lift them out, he looked almost like his head might pop. 

“Come away,” I said. I levitated the heavy things out onto the deck. Sprung the top off. “How do you want them sorted?” I asked. He told me and I charmed the boxes to reorganise themselves in an orderly fashion, spelling the wooden crate lids to keep any eye on any munitions or foodstocks that might become overly rambunctious. 

On the boat, away from contact with the water, the magic worked mostly as expected. If it was a little more lively, a little more energetic or disorderly than usual, perhaps, though I am unsure if it was the river or myself. 

“Have a seat, Able. Surely I’ve saved you some minutes.” 

He was looking at the boxes. He seemed fascinated by a small tin of wax-gum, stood on the border between two crates, trying to decide if it should bed down with the other adhesives or if, as a gum, it was perhaps a foodstuff. “It’ll figure it out. Sit.” 

He sat. 

“It’s incredible,” he said. 

“I suppose,” I recall I said. 

He sat there for a few moments, watching me conjure a gout of steam that could not trouble the water.

“What’s it like?” he asked. I believe I sighed, but I gave him an answer this time. 

“It is a little like doing sums on a piano,” I said, “or, perhaps, more like writing sheet music into the growing of your garden. You have to study a great deal of very confusing things, but the result is a very different and beautiful way.” I conjured a kaleidoscope of butterflies, and we watched them flutter off, to destroy the local flora. Beautifully. 

“I know you have to practice very, very young, and most people don’t have the patience at that age to do it, but…”

Ah, there it was, I thought.

“Might anyone learn it, as an adult? Just a bit of magic, like one simple tune on a piano without knowing all the rest, all the proper stuff?” 

He got the privilege of an honest answer. “No,” I said, “probably not.” 

It is beyond my abilities, to imagine a life without my magic in it or how hard it must be to be a muggle, to see magic but not to know it. If I could, the pain in his eyes at the answer would be rather close to it, I think. 

“May I?” I asked, pointing my wand at him. The spell hit him in a jet of cool blue and his face was split by a broad smile, a little chuckle almost escaping him. 

“This is lovely,” he said.

“Back to your work, Able.” The lids were bullying a last, sluggish tin of plum pudding before, at my flick, they spun themselves over the top of their crates again. 

“Thanks Curse,” he laughed. I watched him go without much humour.

***** *****

We made good speed up the river, or should that be down the river? I am not sure.

We travelled through Edfu with its very small British outpost and Umbu, too. We didn’t stop but we slowed and a small boat ran along us as we passed and told them the news from Cairo and Alexandria, though they’d heard about that last part by then. 

Sometimes on the river a boat travelling the other way would split the water as it rocketed by. They’d shout their greetings to us, ask if Cairo was ours again, then be beyond our shout before we could give a proper reply after “mostly”. 

The weather was scorching hot, but pleasant with a few gentle cooling charms. My time in Portugal was not sufficient acclimatisation to manage without one. Desert started to appear as we came close to the border with Sudan. Not right to us though, the banks of the Nile were not so easily cheated. Still, it was close enough that the trees were small, the fields were narrower and we could see sand maybe just twice as far away as the arm could throw. 

We reached the border a day after we left Luxor, and took the water bridge around a low dam, so that we could carry on into Lake Nubia. Lieutenant spoke broken Arabic to local fishermen heading the opposite way – ‘ _East bank is best for passage he says, east. No, west. I’m sure it’s west, actually. Jago-nini? No idea. Fish? We don’t need any blasted fish, you silly bugger’_ – and then we were on the lake. It was the first lake of significant caliber that we saw, and it took my breath away. I hadn’t known a lake could be so large, and my maps gave me no idea as to that greatest of lakes yet to come. 

The water was green, and still, and in the distance low hills bordered the lake.

The privates had taken to playing catch across both boats. First boat was sometimes as close as twenty feet ahead of us and sometimes as far as a hundred, and they would throw or kick a ball across the gap, sometimes missing and picking it out the water or falling in after it. 

We bumbled along the west bank till sunset. 

At the south of the lake the plant life was a little sparser. There was a part of the beach that was wider and a clearing in the growth spread out a short way, where the trees were smaller and bare, and the grass was thin and coarse, poking out from under pebbles. We drove the boats onto the beach there.

Lieutenant’s boat set out to secure the site. A couple of teams headed into the thin trees while my boat set up camp under Chief’s direction. 

“Swim, boys?” asked a Private, when the lifting was done. “Chief?” 

“I’ve no use for you here,” he growled. 

They grinned at each other and ran off down the coast behind the boats. 

“Not too far!” I called. 

Chief looked at me. 

“Anything for me, Chief?” 

“No, sir,” he said. Cook called him over to look at some peculiarity with sickly lemongrass and he stomped away from me. 

I took a look around. In the opposite direction to the privates the shore narrowed down into nothing. Small rounded stones made up the beach, rather than a fine, tropical sand. I ran some through my fingers. One had a little blood on it, and there was a small dead little creature half under the beach. It was briny and bloated from where the tide had sucked at it, and whatever it had been I couldn’t tell.

“Curse, sir,” came Able’s voice, “anything the matter?” He approached from where he and Cox had tied down the boat. 

“No,” I said, “no.” 

“Fancy a swim, sir?” he asked. He was already stripping on the bank, tossing his clothes down onto the beach and sitting to tug off his boots. My eyes must have lingered, and he turned to me curiously. 

“Sir?” 

“You’re not on your ‘holibobs’ here, Able. Is this what you call at the ready?” I hoped my red face made a passable imitation of anger.

He froze where he was sat. Looked through the thin covers of the tree and over the empty shore, confused. 

“Just keep the Marines in order, and don’t get into trouble,” I said. I drew my wand from the rod at my side. _Prospero_. With a sharp jab, the little charm struck him like a puff of gossamer. “And don’t be long.”

He splashed into the water and went to swim around the back of the boats towards the Privates. 

In the trees, there was a moment to myself before I was ready to head back to the camp, my dour mood now no fiction. The trees there were ugly things, completely wild but nobbled and thin and grey. In the camp, Chief and Cox had gone to join the swimmers, while Cook was focused on his chopping. 

I sat but didn’t want to sit. I stood but did not want to stand and so I kicked a stone into the water but it didn’t help. I was all … twisted up, on the inside. Lieutenant and the squad hadn’t returned yet. Most likely pissing around, there might still be something for me to do beyond the sound of them all splashing around. My boots crunched over the shore to the trees where I’d seen them leave the clearing. 

I was just out of sight of the camp, a minute in, when I found Corporal.

“Curse, sir!” He saluted. 

“Corporal?” I asked, returning it. 

“Lieutenant needs you, quick. There’s something.” 

“What is it?” 

“I don’t know, sir,” he said. 

He took us back towards the camp and then turned and took an angle straight back into the woods. We found the Lieutenant and his whole team pressed in tight, backs to us, rifles out at the ready, looking into the trees. 

I drew my wand, cast imperturbable charms on myself, the Corporal and then the squad, faint charmlight striking out at them quickly. 

Lieutenant had a revolver out and he turned to me. “Curse, what the devil are they?”

In the trees were _Eloko_. They were small, with little six fingered hands and thumbs, and burning red eyes. Their mouths were jagged slashes in little masks of bark, and moved as if screeching a warning, but they made no sound. They rose out of the bark of the trees and they waded through it like they were waist deep in water. Dark black and grey, they crawled down the trees towards us. A dozen of them. Until they were just above our heads and they did not seem so small. 

“What are they?” 

They swayed like they were buffeted by a wind I couldn’t feel, or a current, rocking back and forth, and their little thumbs were horned. 

“Magical creatures” I said, “Unsettling, but mostly harmless, if I recall correctly.” 

There was a little less tension in them at that, but their rifles didn’t lower. 

“They don’t bloody look harmless, Curse!” said one of First Boat’s Marines. 

“They’re a little like gnomes and a little like ghosts,” I explained. “It’s this place, there’s a lot of magic passing through, a lot of odd magical things you don’t see elsewhere.” I paused. “There’s something else, at the back of my mind. Something about the _eloko_.” 

“Should we head back to camp or do we need to move on, Curse?” asked the Lieutenant. 

I hesitated. 

“They’re harmless,” I said. “Harmless, but…” 

He looked at me, and I remember how white his eyes were, before it came to me, in a flash. “We need to leave,” I said. 

“Steady back, men,” said Lieutenant. 

I grabbed him, “No. No. They form where clever things die, elephants, gorillas, monkeys, and only their killer can hear them.”

“What is it Curse? Why’s that matter?”

“Look at how these things are moving. They came from creatures that died in the _water_.”

His eyes widened. 

“Back!” I shouted. “To the beach. Run!” 

They set off ahead of me and I slashed my wand at the trees so that they went up like a dozen candles. The _eloka_ burnt with silent screams. 

We reached the beach in time to see it. They were still swimming, Chief stood by the water, umpiring a game. 

“GET OUT!” shouted Lieutenant. “Get out of the bloody water!” 

They turned towards us, the swimmers, so that only we saw the explosion of violence. There was a flash of something. Brownish-gray and slick like an otter. A long neck. A tooth or a horn and one big, black eye. Then it was gone and a Private with it. There was red in the water.

Rifle cracks started firing into the water. 

“Hold! Hold! You idiots.” 

I flicked my wand, summoned the Marine furthest out to shore. He was just into the air when it struck again. Quick as a knife it twisted towards another man and took him instead. They started screaming, and coming back, but they were yards out. 

I cast my charms as quickly as I could. It struck at Chief as he pulled a man out of the surf. It was long enough, and shallow enough at the shore, that I could catch it with an impedimenta, and it slowed just enough for a few rifles to take aim and fire. 

The whole patrol scrambled back to the trees, we lost four to the water. I cast charms and healed what simple wounds the survivors had caught in their escape. We were all of us strange and breathless, in a flickering light from the fire in the trees, while smoke filled the air. 

“ _Jago-nini,_ ” whispered the Lieutenant, “ _Jago-nini_. I didn’t understand.”

“We can’t stay here,” I said. “Chief, ready the boats, we’ll make it off the lake tonight.” 

“I’m not going back on that water, mate, no fucking way,” said a Marine. I stunned him in a jet of red wand-light and he hit the ground like a sack of bricks. The other men turned their eyes away from me, apart from Chief. 

“What about their bodies?” he asked. 

“Leave them,” I said, gesturing to the fire. “The trees won’t have them, at least.” I made sure every part of that jungle was alight with curse-fire before we set off again.

***** *****

Under the deck of the first boat, in what little space there was, Lieutenant was sat with his head in his hands.

“It’s been hours, Lieutenant. Come on, you’re needed upstairs.” 

He kept his head in his hands and spoke in a flat voice. “I came from a farm, Curse. Grass and hills and lambs, not jungle and heat and spirits. It was good. It made sense. And here…” When he looked at me his eyes were red but his face was pale. 

“I just–” he said.

My wand went into the rod at my hip, but I didn’t draw it. A cheering charm didn’t feel right, in the circumstances; I put my hand under his arm and pulled him to his feet. He looked at me listlessly and I met his eyes, really _looking_. 

“Come on, upstairs. Come and see.” 

Pushing him in front, we climbed onto the deck. First boat was actually behind Second at my direction. The boats were almost bow to stern, together, and with the loss of their pilot our Cox had taken the lead. In the dark, the lit end of his cigarette was like a firefly and he gave the Lieutenant and I a deep nod on our emerging. He could say a lot with a little that man. 

At the back, I levitated us onto the next boat, first him then me. You could hear the voices of the patrol over the thrum of the motor, but not the words, so I silenced it for us. I put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Listen,” I said, and he did. 

“... and after that he were up near Conkleton. That was wur he met his young Sally... ‘My young Sally’, that was what he would call her, he was saving his pay, ‘alf of it every week, so he could take her as a wife. I don’t know how ‘e meant to support a blind wife on ‘alf a Private’s pay—” 

“—even blind, she’d have felt that big conker on his face if she took him, I told him—”

“—she’d have been hoping that weren’t the only big thing on him. And she’d have been disappointed!” 

There was a large laugh, as everyone piled in, as if whoever they were eulogising was still there and listening, before it settled down and the first voice came again. 

“I’ll make sure Sally gets what he were savin’, and his ma, too. We’ll all remember him.” There was a pause, the sound of tin mugs hitting tin mugs. “ _Per mare per terram_ ”. 

I leaned down to whisper into Lieutenant’s ear. He’d always seemed as tall as I was, but I realised he was actually quite a bit shorter a man. I said, “this is where home is, for now.” Or some trite like that, I maybe even felt it at that moment. 

With a push he stepped into the light cast by the lantern. Chief set a crate upside down for him, someone shoved a mug into his hand, while someone else set a blanket over his shoulders, as it was long gone midnight. 

I made sure the booze kept appearing and that the stories never got too loud. I kept Cox furnished with cigarettes and I watched the stars wheel overhead. Mostly though, I stood in the shadows at the back of the boat, and I watched the muggles grieve.

***** *****

“There’s some mist rising up there, looks like it’s getting thicker. Set the lights, Private,” said Chief.

Chief had taken to frequent and varied orders, trying to keep our boats sole remaining marine occupied. 

It'd been a whole day since our brief setting down on the lake shore. My time since morning had been spent looking at the intel, sitting at the back of the boat, or tracing the runes on the Navy Rod I wore. I think I hadn’t cast a spell that entire day to that point, beyond getting dressed. It was enough to let the heat sit on me and leach the world from me. 

The motor whipped the water, and we progressed up the river slowly. First Boat was up in front again, marginally, mostly over to port in the wide stretch of river. Khartoum could only be an hour or two away. 

“You’ll be home soon, Chief. Are you excited to see some familiar faces?” I didn’t open my eyes. He didn’t respond for a long while. 

“Plenty of mission left ahead of us, sir,” he said. 

“That there is. Still,” I opened my eyes and looked at him, “show some excitement. A chance to show me around your gaffe, get some decent food. Come on, let a little _human_ out.” 

“Might be my station, but it’s not my home. And I’m not looking forward to writing those poor boys’ letters.” 

“Is that your job?” I asked. 

“No,” he said. “It’s not my job.” 

The fog was getting thicker. It was curdling over the river and the banks like a pea soup, and even First Boat was starting to look a little indistinct. Leaving Chief at the wheel, I leaned out over the prow. Sometimes, in disputed territory, lifting a fog can cause more problems than sailing through. 

“Lieutenant,” I called. 

“Curse, that you?” he called back. “Best get rid of this mist, if you could.” 

I drew my wand. I cast the usual charm, but after a few minutes there was no distinct change. In fact, if anything, it got thicker.

“That’s odd,” I muttered to myself. I think I presumed it was the Nile. Perhaps the fact we were near the fork of the Blue and the White or something like that. I know my stuff generally speaking, but I’m not an academic. _Maldecir Vento,_ I flourished my wand and a silver spell-light shot into the fog. I kept the wand trained up the river. It was gentle at first, a slight kick, but before long the wand was warm to the touch and my shoulders shook as it bucked and twisted. I ended the charm. 

“Stations!” I called. The men looked at me sharply. “Lieutenant! The fog is definitely magical. Are your Ushers in the habit of hiding the city?” 

“No. Not that I’ve seen before!” he said. 

From the back of the boat, Chief’s voice shouted out. “Get to your stations! At the ready.” 

I retreated towards the cabin and tapped the men with imperturbable charms as I passed them. 

“Not again,” I heard Private mutter.

I silenced the engines, but after several moments it slipped. Perpetually frustrating. 

Apart from the sound of the boat, it was quiet. The men were all holding their rifles or mounted guns, looking in every direction. There was only the occasional creak of their gun straps as they readjusted their positioning. 

The banks were completely shrouded, until suddenly they weren’t. We were in the middle of Khartoum. 

There were guards on the bank, and a patrol boat docked at a pier. In front of us was the fork of the river, and atop it a squat castle. All around us, on the banks, small sandstone houses had flat roofs and glassless windows. 

The men walking the pier had the grey uniforms and round helmets of the Imperial Army. They saw us immediately. “Tommy! Tommy! Erschieße sie alle!”

There was a lonely crack on their side, then one from the back of the boat, then the sound of a stable of guns came into being, reports from every direction. I cast the shield charm as quick as a whip. I threw flame at both docks and focused on destroying their river craft. 

He could’ve killed me. Struck me dead while my attention was elsewhere, if he’d been less sporting. His blasting curse struck the river dead between the two boats, and there was a pause as I sought him out. 

After a suitable pause a curse screamed from the wall of the castle at the fork. 

He was fierce. Spell light washed over the river and boat. Twice, I was almost overcome, his curses landing against my charm with the horrendous crack of lightning. Between us, the river boiled and spilled over itself. I heard Private cry out near me. A great cry, and I was sure he must be dead. Bullets pinged against the boat while my attention was elsewhere. 

I tried thunder, flame, water, pushing through the forms quickly, gathering speed. I reached blood, then pain, then loss. He struggled with that one, but launched back a horrendous Clarion Charm as I finished the spell-chain and I knew he was frightfully experienced. He took the momentum, and I saw a fierce spell burn at the end of his wand. 

Then he made a mistake, he stepped closer so that I could see him clearly between the crenellations. I stepped out myself, and struck quicker. The evil green light lit the river, lit the boat, washed out the castle so that everything was soaked in a brilliant, lurid green or else was black with shadow. There was death dropping from his realm through ours, the rushing of fate, that inevitable success, and he was done. No more than half a minute of spell fire, but I was covered in cold sweat. It is not an easy thing to cast that curse, not the first, at least. 

The boat rocked against the waves of my battle and slowly settled, before I could cast another charm over ourselves. First boat was far to our port now, with a small river craft closing in while German troops fired from behind sandbags on the dock. 

Two more killing curses destroyed the boat and the near embankment on the east side, before I turned to our nearer enemies. The shield charm covered us again and their bullets turned wide. 

There were maybe forty of them scattered amongst the houses. I transfigured the Nile water into seeds of _Hedera Helix_ , Creeping Ivy that is, which grew on my mother’s house and with which I had a long familiarity. They were banished into the city, hundreds. I dared not try and move the amount of Nile water they would need, but instead cast a water charm, then an animation charm so that I was free to turn my attention elsewhere. 

Two of the men were on the deck. Private was pale and still, and to the touch he was already cold. His jacket was damp with river water and his chest had a small hole near the heart. Cox was holding his hand. One hand was pressed to his own neck, and there was blood over his fingertips. I went to move his hand, but he shook his head. 

He pointed in the direction of First Boat. “I’ll last a little while,” he said. 

Our mounted gun was firing, still, at the bank on our side, but the rest of the men had turned towards the east bank and were firing at those Germans who hadn’t been caught by the roaring emerald bonfires on the river and dock. First Boat would last a little longer.

My ivy was near done. In the houses it had snaked through all the windows. On the streets and in the river mud it had snagged the Germans, hooked into their clothes and crept around their necks and their wrists, faster than they could cut it away. 

There was a trailing root close to the boat, dipping gingerly into the river. _Incendio Diabolique_.I jabbed my wand at itand a tongue of blue fire struck the root and set it aflame. 

It only took a minute to cover the entire quayside in seeking fire. I had never used that particular curse before – oh, please do forget me mentioning the incantation. It does somewhat negate the purpose of all that non-verbal training as a Cursebearer, but I’m sure you bear bigger secrets in any case.

My instructors had taught me that where large scale magical assault was necessary, without risk of enemy magical combatants, seeking fire’s preference for eyes, ears, nostrils and the mouth made for a quick and painless death. 

I was close enough that I could see that for the lie it was. It was only that they could not scream. We were almost at the fork. I turned away from the sight, and tried to close my ears to the sounds, my nose to the smell. 

The other boat was still under fire, a quick transfiguration drew the water into a wall in front of them, high and thin, the limit of my ability. Avoiding charms, I animated it, and it surged towards the bank as a wave. I did this several times, seeking to soak them to the bone so that I might cast something else, something different than the Seeking Fire. 

I miscalculated. 

The water that I drew up responded to my magic, but the rest of the river obeyed physics. The swell drew First Boat away from us, and moments later it was too far gone. 

With wide eyes, they looked at us, and then they were beyond the fork, on the other arm of the Nile. 

There was a second of silence then Chief rushed me, took me by the lapels. “You’ve killed them, hennish! Hag spawn! You’ve killed them!” 

He threw me to the deck and I landed on poor, dead Private. I wrestled with him. His grip was iron and all the while bullets were now smacking against the hull of our boat, and the cabin. 

“You’ll kill _us_ ,” I cried. 

I managed to flip him, but couldn’t bring my wand to bear, or focus my thoughts, one of his hands was on my mouth. 

A shell exploded nearby, water slapping against my back, and he managed to slip from under me so that we were separated a small distance. 

He kicked out as I stood. I dodged, in part. He caught my wand-hand. Both our eyes tracked it. it soared good and true, over the railing, almost to the bank. It barely splashed, and was gone. 

“You bastard.” The coldness, the coldness in me, was beyond description. The absolute certainty that there was not a wand-maker in a thousand miles. That there was not a wand within thirty miles other than that of the dead wizard in the castle, surrounded by however many muggles with rifles. 

“ _You’ve_ killed them,” I said, “the _only_ chance that I could have saved them. You’ve kicked it into the river.” 

He must have seen the truth of it, for he took his head into his hands and sunk down onto the deck and didn’t try to strangle me again. 

The rest of the men were still at stations, casting quick glances at us, firing shots. Their targets were far distant now, and most bullets hit the water. 

“Look.” Cox gritted his teeth to speak, quickly pointing before clamping back down on his neck. 

There was a channel, another crossing from the Blue Nile into our White. Artificial, it completed the water defense of the fort, like a moat. If they could fight their way to it, the small boat of the First team could find its way to us. 

We slowed, as slow as we might and still fight the current of the river. We waited; waited, they did not appear.

***** *****

It was two weeks on from there to the Great African Lake, which the Africans call Nyanza. It seemed much longer. No one would talk to me, no one would look to me, and without my wand I was only half a wizard. And they knew it.

Of all of them, only Cox seemed not to mind my presence. He was not the most vocal man, even before the injury. We set him a hammock on the deck, and made him comfortable. His neck had become a large haematoma on the left. A great, monstrous purple swelling as large as my fist. It mottled and grew darker over days. Twice he bled from the mouth, and though I knew little, I knew enough to be sure that it was not a good sign. 

I sustained him with what little magic I had with me. I was no potioneer, but I had a stock of pepper-ups, some mint that I could grind into an unguent and that sort of thing. I used it all, and it was a fair trade for the company of someone who could tolerate me. 

Are you familiar with furchbar, or foobar as the common men use? Well, if not, let me say it was foobar. An officer and a crew that despised him, with no way to re-establish the proper order. 

Occasionally, boats would roar towards us and pass us. We were wary. Where could they be coming from, where could they be going, with Khartoum fallen? They were all British, by chance, but it was little good. They would pass. They would see us. No civil greeting, no wave, or call. They were like savages, screaming at us, shooting at the water when they raced by. 

“Too long out here,” said Chief, when we encountered our third such boat. “They have forgotten their home, they’ve forgotten the war. Too long left alone.” It was a long sentence for the time, and I was optimistic, but we returned to silence once the boat was out of sight. 

Cox was very ill by this point. When he bled, he no longer spat it out. He was pale, grey, clammy. Even with me present, there would be more than one of the others with him. We held his hand and whispered to him. 

He had told us his wishes, his last messages, all that. The closer he got, the more talkative he was, until he wasn’t. 

It was one more scourge against boat. 

“We shall have to say our prayers, and put him over,” I said. Chief growled, really growled at me. Like he was an animal. “All his brothers are in the river. We have weeks further to travel. We cannot keep him on the boat, in this heat. Lance, fetch down his hammock.” 

“Belay that, Lance,” said Chief. 

“Who commands this boat, Chief,” I said. He looked at me, I looked at him. 

“This is my boat, these are my men. Your mission is your own, but this is my boat.” 

I stepped closer to him, I had at least a head’s height on him, but he was stockier, heavier built. 

“Lance-corporal,” I said, “take down that hammock.”

“Do not touch that hammock, Lance-corporal.” 

Cook was the only one to that point who had not made a sound. “Look at yourselves. He’s not even cold! Just give us a minute. We’ve lost so many, just give us a hell-blasted minute!” 

It was the pain of his voice, more than his words that got through to me. Chief dropped his eyes. I stepped back. The pause lingered. I coughed. 

“Wrap him, properly, Lance. Take him below, for now.” 

“As he says, Lance,” said Chief. 

It wasn’t an offering, or some turning point for our relationship in any positive sense. No truce, but a ceasefire. Caring for Cox, easing his suffering, had taken so much of our attention that the burden of it was not clear until he was gone. There was less weight without his suffering, less pain brushing against our souls. 

It took two days to come to anything else of interest, and I worked the boat like all the rest. It was all lifting, hauling, back breaking stuff, or else horrible heat and sweat and being trapped by the heaviness of it all. And, however much of a muggle I might have felt then, I still had my magic in my constitution. It is a particular type of hell to live without a wand, I think, being bitten by mosquitoes. 

Anyway, we reached a jetty, pushing out into the river. At this dock there were two small cabins onto the river and a British flag, flying proudly. There was no sign of people or boats at the ready, however. 

“Ahoy,” called Lance, “who’s there?” While we others fingered our rifles — they had given me one, now, it being no longer needed by the Private.

There popped up a man from the scrub by the cabins. He had thick round glasses around his face and his hair was stuck out like a dandelion. 

“English, are you?” He laughed, _really_ laughed.

We didn’t quite pull in, but stayed out a little further in the river.

“Yes,” said Lance. 

“Where’s your commanding officer,” I shouted out. 

“Oh he’s not here. Not here, no. Out on a boat, never to return.” He laughed again. 

“We’re coming in.” Chief scowled at me, but didn’t say anything and we brought the boat into the jetty. Nothing happened, on tying up, and we quickly stepped out onto the wood. The little man had scampered closer, peering over it at us. 

We did not bring Cox’s body out. The little man did not offer a hand to pull us up. 

“Who is in charge if your CO is gone, signaller.” Chief waved a hand at the cabins. “You’ll be needed to support Khartoum.” 

“Khartoum?” The little man looked left and right, then settled his gaze up river, in entirely the wrong direction. 

“Oh blow this,” growled Chief. He went stomping off into the camp. 

We followed. None of us had left our rifles on the boat. “Cook,” I said, “stay with the boat.” 

In the first cabin there was nobody. In the second, a man who lay recumbent. He did not respond to voice, though his eyes turned to us. He did not speak, even on being shaken. 

“The sergeant,” said our little shadow. 

“Where are the rest of you?” 

He shrugged. One hand gestured at the forest or the river. “No boats, no leave, no way out.” 

Chief directed Lance to watch our backs. Quickly, we changed what needed to be changed. We unloaded, and under the little man’s eyes took water, food, and ammunition. He watched it all and did not seem to care one way or another. 

On the third trip, he left while my back was turned, and I only caught him walking into the dense green of the jungle. The foliage swallowed him up. 

“Come on, quickly, quickly now,” I said. 

We made double time, rushed the boat, and Cook span the motor up. I cannot tell you what it was that filled me with such a haste, or such chill. Only that whatever had made them men who might be understood was entirely gone, and they were not whatever they might be, removed from all normal society. 

As with all that we encountered, after Khartoum.

***** *****

One more camp we encountered, on the way to Nyanza. Two men waved to us, but they slung rifles from their shoulders when we tried to come any closer, and we passed on.

I played muggle cards, made muggle sport, and sometimes we swam in the river. Some desperate attempt by us all to avoid what we had seen on the riverbanks. There was some strange enervation about the high river, and it was slowly peeling the boat. In that heat, that ferocious heat against which I could now no longer protect, we all melted. 

Cook watched the water, he would measure how much we drank. How much we pissed. Chief steered the boat, or else sat on the aft, legs over the edge, looking into the water. Those others remaining were not otherwise less morose. Myself? I took to those evidences of my magic that I could find. Those specific tools that I had packed but no reason to use. The empty wand-rod that lay at my hip, those small potion ingredients that I had collected or kept. I would look at the photo-plate of Prewett that I possessed. 

That man, that robust, vigorous man. I knew that he lived somewhere over the horizon. Like an anchor, I could feel the weight of him. The only other wizard in the world, the only one other than myself who could survive the sapping of this place. 

It took a further week. No other boats passed us. Whatever our great nation was obtaining from Africa had dried up entirely. Perhaps, at that point, I should’ve reconsidered my mission, that there was any point in killing a wizard, for muggles, when the treasure that he possessed could not find its way to them in any case. It did not occur to me. 

We reached Lake Nyanza. 

For a moment I thought we had cut through Africa, entirely. That it was the sea that sat on the horizon. Truly it was, that lake is no lake. 

A fort covered that river mouth,with a small way through. We readied ourself, but there remained the British flag over its head. 

Closer, closer, but no one to meet us. No one to call to us, or no-one that we could see. We passed it, close to our left side. 

“Ahoy!” called Lance without instruction. 

There was movement in a window, and again, by a wall, I am sure. No one responded. 

“What’s that?” asked Cook, from the other side. At the far end of the river, on the lesser bank, there was an honest to God painting, on the wall, all in red — I did not suppose, at that time, where they may have got the colour. 

It looked to me to be a river. Over the top was daubed, ‘The Spring’. 

We sped out into that lake that was a sea, and felt waves again, tipping and slapping against us. There was a horn from that place that blocked westward travel for a short way and we looked to make around it and so follow the coast. 

The sun was setting, and the sky turned orange. Sunsets are far quicker in that part of the world, only minutes, and I set to fetch my astrolabe – a nice Canterbury Conical, you’ve seen them? – and sextant. 

With the stars and the waves it did not take long to calculate where the lake’s source fed in. 

“Very fine luck, Chief, keep your course and we’ll find the tributary.” 

There was a pause. A pause longer still. “We aren’t taking you any further, we’ll put you down on the beach.” He slapped two hands together, like he was dusting them off. 

“Excuse me? Our mission isn’t done, Chief.” 

“Chief– Usher–” cut in Lance, but we paid him no mind. 

“My mission was to get you up the Nile. We’ve crossed Jinja. You’re up the Nile. You can go hang for all I care.” 

“Chief–”

“I am giving you a direct order–”

“Cursebea–”

“You are not my CO. You killed my CO,” he roared. He had my mantle in one hand so that he could scream it in my face, pulling me onto my tiptoes, and I grabbed him where he held me, and _squeezed_. 

Lance was there, breaking in between us. “Fire!” he shouted. “Fire, damn it!” 

Behind us, where we had passed the mural and received no answer, the fort was aflame. Great purple flames were flicking out, licking at the wooden structure and growing bolder and greater still. 

“Spin us around, Cook.” 

I did not say anything dramatic, anything histrionic. I said, simply, “Our mission is west.”

“Hang your mission,” he said, “A British fort is burning.”

We pitched onto the stony beach, and had taken buckets by that point. The flames appeared ordinary in every way except colour, which were a rich royal purple. 

“Is it dangerous?” asked Lance. Chief was already running over the beach towards the heat. 

“It is a fire,” I said. The curse that created it, I suspected, but would need further evidence before I could be certain. “Hold back a second, boys.” 

Chief had reached as close as he might to the flame. He was at the door that made into the main buttress of the fort, where the fire had taken half of the right side, but if fought might be pushed back and the door made useful to anyone inside. 

Water splashed over it, to little effect. Nothing happened. Chief took another fill of r from the river, if it was as I suspected then the flame would not respond well to water. Nothing struck at him, and I let my hand from Lance’s shoulder. “Go on,” I said. 

Chief threw another bucket, and this time caught the flame on the lintel full-on. It was quick. Its lunged forward, and wrapped him in purple, swaddling him like he was a baby in linen. In all other ways it was fire. He crackled, spat, popping and screaming, and tried to make it into the water but could only collapse there at the bank. 

“Don’t look. Don’t look now.” I turned them away. “Come on. There’s no one to save here.” 

Cook was sobbing, Lance was scarred. “There was no way of knowing what would happen,” I told them, “they keep a lot of potions in those forts. Whatever it was could not be predicted.” I told them this, again and again, and slowly it settled the crew and we made our way west.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more.


	3. The Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final section of the Nile, Tom completes his journey.

**The Spring**

Don’t you take notes? I am aware this is quite involved. I thought that you might record… No? Well you know your own business best.

The astrolabe led us true. We reached a shallow river at the northwest corner of the lake, and left the waves behind. Who was there, on the boat? Well, that at least, I thought you would remember. 

There were three of us that made it to the Spring. Myself, Cook and Lance.

It took five days more. The source was a long river. I leave it to your imagination the magic of that place, so close to the Spring. The jungle was thick, green and towering. As the river shrunk, the liveliness grew and trees arched over us like a cathedral vault. 

We could barely hear each other speak at midday, the noises of all the insects, the current and bird song _truly_ cacophonous.

It was on the fifth day, when the river was shallow and only perhaps thrice as wide as our boat, and encroached by great roots and vines and snakes, that we saw them. 

Black men, tribal men, as dark as men could possibly be. Warriors, and witch-doctors. Everything that you might suppose them to be and to see in that place. Only there were five or ten white men, too. Dressed exactly the same, a part of that same company. They ran alongside the river, keeping a pace with the boat. Mostly they were silent. Sometimes, when we reached a slow meander and they might rest on the corner, their witch-doctors would come to the fore. Dressed in great masks and extravagant furs, they would chant at us, and shake gourds, and all the other warriors and the white men, too, would holler at us. 

In that place, on that river, if it was magic or ritual, I could not tell. It was no magic I recognised. 

“I don’t like this,” said Lance. His rifle was not levelled but it was at rest in his hands. Cook was at the tiller. Tell them to piss off, I instructed him. The clothes of some of the white man were ripped and torn into this continental fashion, but I could see the khaki, I could see a hint of emblem. They could only be Expeditionary Force, either come with Prewett or travelled up from somewhere else that he might have contact with. 

The fort. The fort that had been set afire, with some of their number still in it. Prewett really did mean to raise up the drawbridge to his little kingdom. 

“Piss off!” shouted Lance. 

They didn’t say anything. Our countrymen did not translate the sentiment, or seem to even understand us themselves. A warrior ran and threw a spear that arced clear over the boat to hit the bank on the far side. 

“Easy.” I put a hand on Lance’s rifle arm. “A warning.” 

There were five snakes that I could see in the river, and likely many more in the branches and trees. 

“ _Snakes! Snakes!”_ I hissed, “ _Wake up, the men are here to steal your eggs and take your skin._ ” 

Oh, did I not say? It is an old gift of my family and our noble ancestor. Yes. I told them to attack. 

Those snakes who listened wound their way down from trees and branches, they poured from the river to attack. The witch-doctors stopped their spell, the warriors ran. Within a minute they had all melted into the jungle, fleeing upriver. 

“I hear snake can be good eats,” said Cook, some minutes later.

Lance was shivering. “What a horrible thing to hear,” he said. 

It was half a day later that we finally ran aground. We were long past the final fork, and the boat was struggling with the depth of the water. The spring could not be more than a few miles distance. 

“Cook,” I said. “Stay with the boat. We shall go and see what we can see. If we don’t return tonight,” for it was only the early morning at that point, “then leave, and get a message to Blighty that we failed. They shall have to send an army.” 

By his face, that our mission was so highly in doubt was a surprise, but he gave me a nod. 

“Lance,” I said. 

“Yes, Curse.” 

“You follow my example. If I shoot, you shoot. If I talk, you talk. You will need to have your wits about you.” 

He held his rifle tightly, and shouldered his pack. We were provisioned lightly, but suitably. If it weren’t so bloody hot, it might even have been pleasant.

We stomped over the banks of the river. Eventually the river was only the height of a tall man wide, and it began to wind up a steeper and steeper rise. 

We crested onto a plateau. Small dwellings and an expansive clearing made a village, and those men from earlier were arrayed before us arms cross so that they could hold their own forearms. Spears on the ground in front of them. 

The river wound through the village, and beyond it I could see a very small lake, perhaps a very large pond. There was masonry collapsed around it. Great stone, mostly covered in weeds. There had been great structures there, once. 

“Curse, to your right.” 

A jet of red came from the trees, straight for my eyes.

***** *****

When I woke, my throat was dry, my head hurt and I couldn’t see. Not at first. I was in some cold, damp, stony structure, lying on the floor. The eyes began to adjust to see some small details. An impression of a little space and a stone ceiling, some water trickling past me, in a stream a finger wide.

“Why have you come here?” There was a man there. He was dressed in simple black clothes so that I couldn’t make out his edges or his size, only the whiteness of his skin and his bald head at those points where he was not covered. He was sat over me, my pack was at his feet, and he was hunched over, looking at the floor. 

He pushed his fingertips over his scalp, roaming. There wasn't stubble to see, but I could hear it, the scrub of his fingers over tiny hairs.

"Are you an assassin?" he asked.

"I am an Usher of the Crown," I said. My voice was croaky and hoarse. 

"You are neither." His face remained turned to the ground so that I only saw his shoulders, his scalp, his fingers. His fingers were fat, like uncooked sausages, or perhaps thick caterpillars that had lived their whole life in deep darkness. 

Then he looked at me. "You are a pilgrim, questing after a mystery you cannot understand." His eyes were sunken in his skull. "You have been tested," he said, "and now you think ‘I am not so weak’." 

His voice? Like an actor trained. Hypnotic. Baritone. Rich in quality. Perhaps the greater part of his power was in his voice, he was a leader easily heard. 

“Please, water.” 

“You are a wizard, yes? You have the rod on your hip. You have the look of it. But where is your wand?” 

He had something in his hands. It was a knife. He drew it across the stone of his seat with a scraping. 

“You know the killing curse, and you think yourself strong. You have lived in a dead land all your life, and so you think that there is strength in death. Yes?” 

“Please. If there is any water...”

He knocked at something metal with the point of his knife. A canteen. He made no move to give it to me, so I made no move to come any closer to him, and his knife. 

“Life. Death. That is their concern, away on the continent, and every other part of the world, but not here in mine. This... is only a body. They can ask you to kill me, but you cannot condemn me.

“You cannot condemn me.” 

From at his feet, he picked up something long and thin. He took to whittling, long strips of springy wood falling to the ground. 

“No, you cannot condemn me because you have not learned the truth. As I have learned the truth.” 

My entire focus was on the canteen at his feet, and my only thought to continue this conversation so that he might grant it to me. 

“At Dunkirk … it seems a thousand lifetimes ago, now … I fought to save, and to kill. I fought Grindelwald, sure that the magic in my wand was the most powerful magic I might ever know. I fought Grindelwald, and I learned then that my life was no longer my own. All around him, none of our lives were our own. Seven fought him, and some died, and some did not, and it was fair because we were all of us within his power and it was only that he decided where one curse should fall or another. Just as he decides where his muggles should stand, here, or there.” He pointed with his knife, as if directing. 

“Within his sphere, _all_ were equal. Wizards standing against him or with him, and the muggles also. I took the feeling of it, all our fates running through him.” 

He took the knife into his mouth, clamped it so it was held by his teeth. He examined the stick and was evidently dissatisfied, and removed the knife and set to whittling again. 

“It was after Dunkirk that I realised that I had seen the truth, and it was brilliant… A brilliant thing. 

“It speared me, this knowledge, you see.” He looked at me. Mimed it with his knife, “speared me... 

“The muggles of his Empire, all enchanted to be of one mind, one will… My God. The magic. The magic to do that. Perfect, pure, blissful.

“If _I_ could do that, I might end the war, I might end war. I might make _one_ people of the world. So, you cannot condemn me, in truth you cannot kill me, for you are not part of me. Do you understand?”

He placed his knife back into some hidden place. The stick that he had been whittling he threw before me. It felt like a wand, but the end was sharp at one end, for skewering. 

“No,” I said. 

He stood and made his way further back, stooping below the low ceiling. “Your man on the boat, he tried to leave but I could not let him leave.”

He looked back to me. “I hope in time you will come to forgive me.” He flicked a finger at where he had sat. “The canteen is there.” 

I fell on it and drank.

***** *****

It may have perhaps been about a day, maybe a little more, before I realised that I was not imprisoned.

My hands led me along the wall, to stairs, to a door that swung open at my touch and revealed blinding sunlight. 

Around me was chatter and hubbub in no language I could understand. Black faces and a few white: they were all engaged in various businesses, and there was no segregation that I could see. 

Shaky, I stumbled on the uneven ground. ‘ _Mzungu, Mzungu_ ,’ said the children who swarmed me. And they carried some fruits and sticky rice that they shared freely. I fell on it like a man who had not eaten for far longer than a day. 

One of the youngest children took me by the hand. They led me through the village, past smiling women and others at play, or rest. We came to the miniature lake that I had seen before I was stunned. 

It sparkled in the sunlight, more diamonds in its waves than the crown of any king or queen. At the far end, the small river began its journey. Back, all the thousands of miles that I had come, to the sea. At this outlet sat the god, in full state. 

The child tugged my hand. We walked to him as supplicants and he deigned to grant us an audience. 

“You have emerged into light, by your own will,” he said, “and all it took was that you _did_ will it.” It was to be another game, then. 

Outside that dark cavern, he did not look quite so much the imposing figure that he had the day before, and even his trained voice was not sufficient to make up the difference. In fact, he reminded me of Cox, as he lay on the deck of the boat, hand to his neck. Perspiration beaded on his forehead, and his clothes hung off him for—as thick as his sausage fingers and champagne bottle calves were—overall, he was too thin. Skeletal, with dark recesses around his eyes. 

“Where’s my Lance-corporal, have you murdered him?” 

“Murder? No, no, I have not murdered him. Even your Cook I did not murder, I only kill.” He laughed, a high laugh, and at this his entourage joined in. He smiled at them, pleased. 

“Damn it! Is he alive, man?” 

Prewett was seated. Around him were three women, heavily pregnant, and several more not visibly so. All the women were decorated in tracings of ochre, patterns that spiralled across their scalps and down all their limbs. The pregnant women fed from the same plate that Prewett picked at. The others, the women and the warrior-men who formed the final, furthest part of the circle did not eat. 

“All who come here live.”

I growled. Really, honestly, growled. Like I was some wild thing from the forest beyond the lake. 

Prewett adjusted his position in the chair. “He is alive. He is one of us now, and I think he will be happier here than he could be at any other place. Come, sit with us.” 

I stayed standing, but I was trembling. There was something I could not express though I tried. 

“Why? Why are we alive?” This was not quite it, though close. 

Prewett turned to the lake, he reached from his chair and dipped his fingers into the water, and shuddered. 

“I suspect the first magical people, and the first muggles, lived in this place. They all lived together. I wonder which came second, the magical or the muggle. The longer I think the more I suppose one way, but then the other. Do you suspect they even knew the difference?” 

“I don’t know.” 

Prewett flicked his hand at a man, and some water was brought to me. From the arm of his chair he picked up a wand. A long, slender Ash wand, if I don’t miss my guess. He conjured a parasol above my head and charmed it so that it would hold there, turning and moving as I did. 

“Thank you,” I said, after a moment. 

He shrugged, as if to say, ‘ _we are all friends here, it is no matter, I did not kill one of you yesterday_ ’. 

If he had any other philosophy to profess, he seemed in no rush. He was very still, you understand? He did not move, except when he thought it might punctuate his speaking and he did not speak without something to say. He might suddenly grab you by the shoulders and speak the truth of your life into your ear, or he might pass you, lurching like a drunk, and never say a word for all the time you knew him. 

At length he came to say, “Do you know powerful magic, Cursebearer?” 

And I was surprised, because I had not worn my mantle, or any sign that would identify my branch when we set out. I supposed Lance must have told him. “I was a good student.” 

“What is the most powerful spell you can think of?” He was not looking at me, but fiercely looking at the swollen belly of the woman closest to him, like a hawk. 

I had no reason to lie. He had been a Banneret of the Special Service Brigade. And I was curious, curious to what he would turn this to. I scratched my chin, where the deep sunburn began to peel. 

“I suppose the blasting curse, arithma–” 

“No! Not Arithmantically! I said _powerful_ , not explosive. What are those spells that are _superior_ , that not any wizard can cast, that burden you with knowledge to _bear_.” 

“Ah,” I said. 

“Yes.” It seemed that was all that he needed from me. “The Torture Curse, The Killing Curse, The Patronus Charm, The Unbreakable Vow. Spells powered by great emotion, they are unquantifiable by arithmancy. There are other things, too, blood charms, cast on homes, on portals, by those with a great fondness or duty. Uncommonly powerful.

“Grindelwald found one such magic, discovered his enslaving enchantment, here. His _imperius_. A glimpse of the true treasure of this place, but shallow, far too shallow.

“There are greater magics still.” 

“If there are, I don’t know them.” This was evidently the wrong thing to say. He looked at me with scorn. Then a spasm seized him and he gave out a great gasp. 

“The lake water,” he said, “the water.” One of his women gave him his chalice from the table. He drank it and slowly settled. 

He pointed towards the village. “Morfin, your man is out there. We can talk again later.” 

I stumbled back and the shock of _my_ secret hid his. I didn’t realise it till much later, the what he had given me. That most guarded incantation which had built Grindelwald’s Empire. It hardly seems important now. It was not his grandest secret.

***** *****

I spent half an hour going from house to house, babbling to people who couldn’t understand me before I found Lance, not far from the tree-line.

He was dressed as they were. His uniform was not frayed, but it was otherwise cut into that tribal fashion, though it looked very odd on his tall frame, with his blonde hair. 

“Curse,” he said, “have you been busy with the Banneret?” 

I took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Where the devil were you? Where were you?!” 

“I’ve been here. There are Expeditionary Force here, you know.” 

“They stunned us!”

“After that they woke me up and said it was just being safe. Said Prewett and you were catching up, and that we were to be here for a while. No harm done. Are you caught up? Isn’t it lovely here? I’m happy to wait as long as whatever you’re studying takes. You won’t get me back on that river.” He laughed. 

“Catching up?” I said, “what about Cook, man?”

“Oh yes, Cook,” he said. 

I looked at his eyes, really looked. They seemed slow to move. The pupils slow to shrink or grow, when his head moved from shadow to light. 

“Oh, Merlin.” We were alone at the treeline, in sight, but of little interest to those a good distance away. “Come on, we have to go. There’s something here, something wrong.” I tugged at his arm and he followed me into the jungle, over roots and stumbling ground. 

“You got your wand back,” he said, pointing to the stick that I had placed into my rod. 

“Not quite,” I said, “and thank you, for telling Prewett goodness knows what about me.” 

He stumbled for a while, in silence, while we trekked. “No,” he said, “no. I didn’t tell him anything. He didn’t ask about you, said it was _me_ he didn’t know, but that he had been waiting for you a long time. I didn’t know you were a Slytherin before he told me.” 

The great secret, dropped as casually as you might like. Yes, raise your eyebrows, enjoy it. The gift has long been held by my family, and before Clarke they were Gaunt, and before that they were Slytherin. 

“I am not a Slytherin,” I said to him, a reflexive response. After a few moments longer he shrugged his shoulders. “How did he know that?” I asked. 

Lance had no answer. 

It took me maybe five minutes to stop walking, and settle on the ground. How could he know that?

I had my mission, and it was clear that there was no way that Prewett might be returned to the fold. He had burned his bridge, taken his kingdom. He was sickly and frightening, and he would never leave this place.

Surrounded by warriors, with some variety of magic that had infested the village, Prewett was worshipped here, and protected. Any harm that fell on him would be collected in full from the person who had struck him, I was certain.

He wanted to talk to me. He knew me. All that I had read about him, now it seemed that I was the ignorant one. How did he know who I was?

‘ _Extreme prejudice_ ’, the phrase came back to me. I had my mission, but it would cost me more than I was willing to pay, I thought. 

But, he knew me. I could leave. I could save my own life. But he knew me. I had my mission, but what was it to me if he lived or died in this impossible, hidden place. He knew me. 

There was a snake not far from me, when I called. A brilliant, green, three-foot horror. What it was, I didn’t know, but it was steeped in magic, its venom burnt the forest floor where it oozed from its fangs. 

I took out the wand that Prewett had sharpened to a point and got the snake to drip its venom on it. I then took a pebble from my pocket and placed it in the water. A moment later, Morgrave’s hat reappeared. 

I made my oath to the crown, and there was a magic in that place, and in that need of saying it that stuck to the office of that hat. I offered it to Lance, who took it, and put it on his head, and his eyes shrunk and his gaze cleared. 

“Curse?”

“I shall need you to protect me, Lance.” 

We returned to the village.

***** *****

Some hours spent under that canopy, at the border of the village, and the sun set. Lance I sent into the village, he was useless to me. An hour after dark, there was a bonfire in the middle of the village.

They played drums, and sang, and I saw them dancing. By far, the vast majority of the village were there, so I prowled the perimeter until I was certain that he was not. 

He was by the lake, where I had left him, seated in his chair. But he was alone.

“Here we are, at this time, at last,” he said. 

“How do you know me?” I asked. 

He looked at me, took me in, and his eyes lingered on the rod at my hip and the facsimile of a wand that he had provided. 

“You came to this place to kill me without any means to do so. Now you have prepared your means, but have determined not to kill me. You may lose your promised medal.” He laughed. 

“I want you to tell me, why am I here?” 

He stood from his chair, and wandered into the Lake, the spring. That place where all the Ley of Africa came to a head. He beckoned me with a jerk of his bald head. 

“Do you feel it?” he asked, when I joined him.

“I only feel wet. And cold.” 

“Cold, yes. And the tremble?” 

I did not say anything to him, but I felt it. I really did feel it. It was like something in me was shaking. Parts of myself tumbling, like a beaker of water coming to boil. 

“Did you see the Pyramids, when you passed through Cairo?” he asked. 

“...No,” I said, after a moment’s confusion. “There wasn’t the time.” 

“A shame,” he said, “a shame. Wonderful structures. It was the Egyptians that built the first steele, you know. The moment that wizardry started to go wrong.” 

He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “You have a point, I am sure, and I have a mind to hear it.” 

He laughed again, and his laughter seemed to come more easily the longer we spoke. He looked younger and younger. 

“We were talking about magic, powerful magic. And we talked of blood and of emotion. Do you know why these magics are so powerful? They emulate that connection that a wizard might make to their own soul, and that resonance is strong in itself. That is the answer then, the simple answer. What stronger magic can there be then?” 

“The soul,” I said, “the soul.” 

“Yes, the soul. You can bury a secret in a soul, and it will never be found. You can distort a soul, so that it might have a magic that no other magic can match, parseltongue, metamorphmagi, you follow? You can split a soul, and tie it down, so that you might never die. You have heard of this?” 

“I haven’t,” I confessed. 

“Well you can,” he said, “and all of these things more easily here than any other place. The difference between a muggle and a wizard is only soul deep, you see.” 

“That seems rather deep,” I said. 

“It would,” he said, “to you.” 

“You have split your soul, and you believe you cannot die, then, am I to take it?” 

He looked at me in surprise. “Of course not. Aren’t you listening, Morfin?

“The Steele, that first splitting of the soul was a horrendous crime, and forever ruined our understanding of the soul. What is your soul, Tom? Tell me. Tell me now or I will strike you dead.” 

Quick as a flash his arm was extended to me, and his wand tip shone with a green light. 

“It’s. It’s. Me, deep inside, something. All of what makes me me, in some way.” 

His wand was smoldering. “Whole? Immanent?” 

“Yes. Yes.” I said.

Slowly, he lowered his wand. “You are wrong. The soul is not some pillow-case, full of spirit. The soul is a thousand grains of sand, moving and tumbling over itself. It bumps against other souls, and so it grows, until it falls apart again, as your body does. The orthodoxy of the soul as some ever-complete ego...” 

He spat. Right into that sacred place. 

“Why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with me?” I asked. 

“The soul should not be split, it connects ourselves to ourselves in every instance and every moment and every world,” he said. “It is a society, and it is our duty as wizards to join it with others. To grow it and so defeat death. Muggles don’t leave ghosts, did you know?” 

“I did not know that,” I said. 

“Here,” and he gestured at the village where the drums were sounding, “they do, or else they come to me.” He tapped on his sternum, as if he was a hollow drum himself. 

“I have a gift like you. Gifts. Unnaturally got, and the will, but I have taken it as far as I can go. From their souls, I am blessed with clear-sight, I am a seer, a legilimens, and more besides, but without this lake… 

“I have taken it as far I can go. There, I leave it on the bank for you.” He threw his wand, overarm, so that it landed on the grass. 

“I don’t understand, why me?” 

“Not you,” he said, “not exactly. You were a Gaunt, yes?” 

“Yes,” I said, “but I have little to do with my family, my mother is dead.” 

“And your sister,” he said, “but not her son. Find a way to be certain that he will know. Ahh the drums. The drums.” 

The music was getting nearer. The village were coming closer in a trail of torches, music and dancing. We lapsed into silence. 

“There is one thing you have not asked,” he said. 

“What?”

“ _How_. How might someone with the right soul join others to his own? We talked of the resonance, of strong emotion, did we not?” 

The dancers arrived. At the front was one of the pregnant women. Dressed in fine clothes, with gold jewellery and that ochre tracing, all over her body and her swollen belly. 

Prewett walked to her at the bank, and in his hand was the knife. Looking at me, with one finger he traced the line that travelled over the curve of her womb. 

“The horror,” he said, “the horror.”

I leapt at him and took him into the water. If he wanted this, for I suspect he wanted this, he now gave no indication and he fought and bucked like a mule. I pricked him five times with the poisoned wand that he had given me, and he died there. Drowning under the water. 

In his murder, part of my soul touched the immensity of his.

We were not one, murder does not make a whole. It seperates, but for a moment, in breaking, in that place, I saw every part of myself, every place where my soul might touch another, in every instantiation, in every time. One man, across many worlds, with one soul. 

I saw myself atop a ziggurat, dressed in a golden head piece, offering a man’s heart to a flaming bird. I saw myself holding a child, born from a wife, with love write clearly across myself. I saw myself murdered, at the foot of my father’s shack, somehow unburnt, and my nephew held the wand, and chopped my soul and chopped his own. 

And all of it was lost before Prewett. In Prewett, I saw the opposite of what my nephew might do to me in another life. He was immense, immanent, and his soul was the soul of many, he carried them with him to the next world, like a child in swaddling, even as he straddled the boundary to those souls that remained here. Where my nephew had made the profane, I saw now the truth. That Prewett was sublime. 

My face broke the water. 

The woman was screaming, the men were screaming, and I saw Lance. Stood at the shore, fighting, being stabbed. Spear after spear went through him, but he bought me seconds, and the wand that Prewett had thrown I took in my hand. It sang to me. After so long. It sang to me. 

I killed them. I killed all the men in that place. But I could not save Lance. 

I caught my breath, as I catch it now. The intensity, the memory, I am there now even as I am here. 

The rest you know. I apparated to the boat. The boat I then charmed to Lake Nyanza for Prewett’s wand worked exceptionally well on the Nile. From there I crossed land to British ports and traced round Africa then long way. When I made it to London, I had not five minutes to myself before your boys picked me up. 

I had no mind to carry on with that war. No mind to carry on with _you_. You cannot experience what I have experienced and find any cause, any merit, in persecuting people for living and speaking in a different tongue. Or dreaming of a world more complete than the one we now find ourselves.

***** *****

What now then? That is the whole tale. The whole sorry secret. Death, long speeches, and madness, in a once great mind, and very little of Grindelwald. Does this satisfy you, is that little Lake of Tears worth that much to you? What value is there to you, in a soul? You look very sour.

No, I left nothing out that I can think of. That great spell of Grindelwald’s is yours, if you can make more use of it than me. 

Able? 

I accounted for him. 

Is your colleague leaving? He is looking at me very intently. 

Yes, we lost the privates, then Cox, then Able, Chief then poor Cook, and finally Lance remained. 

There is a chill creeping in from under the door, and something else, too. Come away, you did not come in through that door. Please. 

Able, the poor boy. Forgive me, I wasn’t clear because I didn’t wish to discuss it, no-one likes to be thought a fool, or other things either. I cast a charm on him, but I was flustered. I did not account for the river’s effect on the magic. He died with the privates in that earlier section, for my distraction. I should’ve set the river snakes to watch him. I regret it very much and perhaps it explains the difference in my disposition after his loss. 

Oh, tell him to come away from there. He is awaiting your command isn’t he? 

There is a strange look in your eye but that was my only mistake. 

My tale is true. It is true, damn it. Whatever you’re looking for isn’t there. Say something. You believe me, man, don’t you?

Open the door, then. 

To hell with you. But I tell you, I killed him, and I took his secret. Keep it here. Spread it widely, it doesn’t matter. 

Why am I laughing? Why am I laughing? 

_That_ I shall not tell you. 

*


End file.
